


jurassic ark

by victorias



Category: Jurassic World (2015), The 100 (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Dinosaurs, Character Death, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 01:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4285776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/victorias/pseuds/victorias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Ooh, ahh, that's how it always starts. But then later there's running...and, and screaming." Or, the Kane/Abby Jurassic World AU the world didn't ask for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Iteration

**Author's Note:**

> SO HERE IT IS, the dinosaur AU I wrote 22k+ words of entirely in secret, because apparently my first foray back into fanfiction after 5 years was always meant to be Kabby, Clexa, Raven, and some dinosaurs? Sure. Why not. All the chapter headings and images are taken from the original Jurassic Park novel by Michael Crichton, which I recommend reading. Because it is awesome.
> 
> Anyway. If you saw my [graphics series](http://brittanias.tumblr.com/tagged/jw-au) on Tumblr, you know what this is about. If you haven't...go look, then come back. Or don't. I'm not your Chancellor. (I'm sorry...for that joke...I'm just sorry.)
> 
> With special thanks to Sam, Nikki, Allie, and S, who formed one massive four-way cheering squad (and editing team) to get this thing out the door. It would not exist without them.

FIRST ITERATION

“At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structure will be seen.” – Ian Malcolm, _God Creates Dinosaurs_

 

* * *

Clarke hops the plane to Costa Rica for the following reasons: one: Costa Rica is very, very warm and New York is very, very cold at Christmas, two: she hasn’t seen her mother since she dropped her off for her first year of graduate school at NYU in September, and though things are rocky between them from time to time, she really does miss her, and three: well, her very steadfast and serious girlfriend was an excited ball of energy (or, as much as Lexa could be, while trying to maintain her badass cred) when Clarke mentioned that they’d been invited out to the world’s most thrilling theme park.

Wells drops the pair off with a cheery “if something tries to eat you, run” and a stern warning from Bellamy that they were under no circumstances to go anywhere near dying. Clarke naps for most of the flight while Lexa does some light reading ( _God Creates Dinosaurs_ , by Ian Malcolm, of whom Clarke is familiar with and whose girlfriend has made his presence in her own life marginally bearable).

Lexa hides her anticipation fairly well by the time the sleek ship they board comes in view of the much talked about island. Her curly brown hair flies about her normally composed features and masks the soft smile Clarke knows is there. God help her, she’s actually excited.

Clarke and Lexa step foot into Jurassic World on a Saturday. 

 

* * *

 

It was against both Sarah Harding and Ellie Sattler-Grant's advice that Abby Griffin took the job at the former Jurassic Park. The two women both had experience with the living, breathing version of the things Abby had studied from bone for years, and both had informed her time and time again that they were what living nightmares looked like.

But Abby had a thirst for knowledge beyond any cautionary tale she could be told. And so, when Thelonius Jaha called for she and Jake's help and expertise in the behavioral patterns and wrangling of the newly-minted Jurassic World’s dinosaurs, they couldn’t exact say no.

Five years and the death of her husband later, Abby has made her way up the ladder to run the massive park. And here’s the thing very few people know to be true: Abby hates her job. She still loves dinosaurs, yes, and the people she works with are some of the best people she’s ever met. But where Abby had once happily worked as a behaviorist at the park, she now runs the whole thing, and the upward climb from researcher to corporate has drained all passion that she once had from her heart. She’d done it for Thelonius. Because he’d asked. And Jake, too, who had encouraged her to take every opportunity presented to her, because they both thought it would make her happy.

But then Jake was gone.

The official story was—and remains--a malfunction of the raptor paddock. Abby still doesn’t believe it (for many reasons), primarily because Jake had been the one to design that paddock, and she knows that he would never have put himself in a situation where a malfunction could risk his life. But she had no proof: she’d gone to Thelonius with her concerns, and had promptly been mollycoddled into silence. So, she’d watched that particular pack of velociraptors enter “retirement” on Thelonius’ orders, and just…stopped caring. 

She has two more years left on the seven-year contract Thelonius had roped both she and Jake into (he’d done it easily, with a promise that, upon their completion, he would fully fund whatever dig she chose to do until retirement--and really, what were a few years with some artificial dinosaurs when she could spend her life excavating the real ones with no worry of the cost?). At this point, the job is almost mindless, and it’s easy to focus on park numbers and asset management. And she truly, truly has a good team under her, despite Thelonius’ occasional questioning of her hiring practices. Many of Clarke’s friends have taken internships under her leadership; Octavia Blake is now Abby’s right hand woman for asset well being and control, and Monty Green runs all park security. Raven Reyes is her newly minted personal assistant while the girl waits for an opening in engineering and mechanical. And then there’s the park’s resident raptor trainer, who came in after Jake’s death to “handle” the new batch Henry Wu and Lorelei Tsing cooked up in the lab, an often infuriating man who Abby both likes very much, and wants to throw into the T-Rex paddock herself.

It’s safe. And it’s stability. And sometimes, even if she’s not exactly fulfilled, she can sit in the hotel bar with a certain scruffy raptor trainer and forget for a few moments that parts of her feel like they’re missing.

So when Clarke accepts her invitation to visit the park over Christmas after two years of politely declining, Abby can’t help but feel a little bit of herself heal. Just a little.

 

* * *

 

Abby doesn’t dare send Raven to meet Clarke and Lexa at the docks. Clarke and Raven are thick as thieves, but Abby knows better than to put business before her daughter. So she waits patiently in a soft white blouse, black slacks, and nude heels, and tries very hard not to sweat in the Costa Rican sun; “Control freak”, an annoying voice whispers in her brain, that sounds obnoxiously like the raptor trainer she’s trying to avoid.

A glint of blonde hair is all Abby needs to see before she’s striding quickly and purposefully through the thick crowd. She envelopes a grinning Clarke in her arms and cradles the back of her head to her neck as they sink easily into a long-waited for hug. 

“This is Lexa,” Clarke says when she pulls away, in firm tone of voice. Lexa steps confidently forward and meets Abby’s steady gaze with a challenging one of her own, as if daring her to comment, daring her to say a thing against Clarke’s choice in partner. This is clearly someone Clarke is both fiercely protective of, and is protected and respected by in return. It breaks Abby’s heart a little to think either girl thought she would disapprove of their relationship.

“Abby Griffin.” Abby smiles at the girl, holding out her hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Lexa. I’ve never heard Clarke so happy as when she’s telling me about you.”

Lexa takes her hand. “She has told me much about you. It’s an honour to meet the woman running this park.”  _Test passed_ , Abby thinks.

Abby releases the girl’s assertive grasp and places a hand on Clarke’s shoulder, opening her arm to indicate they follow her away from the docks and into the park.

“Welcome to Jurassic World.”

 

* * *

 

Abby leaves Clarke and Lexa in Raven’s capable hands (reluctantly, apologetically, staring at her buzzing phone with the words “Thelonius Jaha” lighting up the screen and internally cursing her boss for his poor timing) once they reach the VIP hotel room she’s arranged for them.

She arrives in the control room just in time to overhear Monty and Octavia debating the finer merits of moonshine and flicking tiny balls of paper at each other as the radio chatters with news of two Triceratops’ fighting in the background.

“What’s the live count?” Abby addresses Octavia while letting her eyes wander to where Monty’s absolutely chaotic workstation is adorned with dinosaur toys.

“22,216. Including Clarke and Lexa.” Octavia replies. Her long brown hair falls in a straight curtain around her shoulders, earpiece and mic in place over the sharp curve of her jaw. She’d originally applied for a wrangler internship in her last year of college, but Abby had seen her quick fire and passion as an something that could be utilized far more if it were directed to the care and wellbeing of not only the animals, but the human population of Jurassic World, as well. She now oversees operations of the whole park, and in her downtime “sneaks” away with her boyfriend, Lincoln, to hike up along the ridge surrounding the aviary (the two are not subtle in their rule-breaking, and Abby had long ago chosen to allow the couple their recreational deviancy in exchange for any interesting research finds and occasional loose compsognathus tagging—they were the worst offenders of slipping the invisible barriers, and thus the ones that needed to be herded and rounded up the most). Octavia adores the herbivores the most out of any of the animals they keep at the park.

“Any incidents?” 

“6 kids in the lost and found,” Monty replies. Abby stares incredulously at the black, yellow, and red logo flashing from his t-shirt. “20 down with heat stroke—“

“Where did you get that?”

Monty looks down at the ‘Jurassic Park’ logo emblazoned on his chest. “Oh, this? I got it on E-Bay. Yeah, it’s pretty amazing, I got it for $150. A mint condition one goes for $300—“

“Did it ever occur to you maybe that’s in poor taste?” Abby tilts her head to take in Monty’s now panicked face.

“Sure. Yeah, no, it did, I understand people died, it was terrible, but…that first park was legit.” Octavia nods in agreement. “I have a lot of respect for it. They didn’t need these genetic hybrids, they just needed dinosaurs—real dinosaurs!”

“Monty. Please don’t wear it again.” Abby ends his ramble neatly.

“Yeah, wasn’t…gonna.” Monty ducks his head back to his computer, but Abby knows he’ll find some way to wear it under one of his other shirts at some point. This was the same kid who had figured out how to brew his own brand of moonshine out of his island residence, despite there being three bars within walking distance of the employee housing. He lived to bend rules.

 _I have to stop hiring rebellious employees_ , Abby thinks. 

“Jaha’s helicopter is coming in,” Octavia reports with a hand to her earpiece. Abby heaves a sigh. “Oh, did you close the deal?”

“Yup,” Abby leans over and throws her coffee away, snags a hair tie from around Octavia’s offered wrist. She pulls her hair to the side and neatly braids it. “Verizon Wireless presents the Indominus Rex.”

They both groan. 

 

* * *

 

There are a lot of necessary evils when one runs a theme park full of dinosaurs: investors, public relations, and corporate meetings all rank high on her list, but Abby’s current prospect of having to go out to actually speak to Marcus Kane may now take first. 

Her meeting with Thelonius Jaha (CEO of Jaha industries, father of Clarke’s best friend, Wells, and an old friend of she and Jake’s—as well as the 8th richest man on the planet) had gone about as well as she could have expected. His recently acquired pilot’s license meant that he held their meeting while attempting to fly a helicopter; Abby had tried desperately to hold on to the papers she’d brought with her while reporting in on asset and park visitor satisfaction. The meeting had ended with a request that she consult with the aforementioned Kane on the containment of “my newest dinosaur”.

Marcus is fixing something or other on his motorcycle when she pulls up to the small hut he calls a home. His hands are covered in grease and his dark green shirtsleeves are rolled up in an annoyingly effortless fashion. Abby lets out a slow breath—three, two, one, _I will not let him get one over on me_ —and approaches him on steady feet (despite her nude heels, which sink into the ground with every step).

“Kane,” she says, by way of greeting.

“Abby." Marcus nods, tilting his head to take in her crossed arms and carefully blank face. "A little on guard today."

Abby's shoulders sag a little. She lets her posture soften out into loosely draped crossed arms (it's a compromise, not a victory). 

"Sorry. Sometimes I build you up to be more of a jerk in my head than you really are."

Marcus huffs out a laugh and stands. He's sporting black jeans and boots--practical, casual, every bit the retired military man turned...well, raptor trainer. If there was a standard of aesthetic for those, Abby thinks Marcus must set it. 

"Did you have a reason for coming down here, or did you really drive all the way to the beach to tell me I'm not as big a jerk as you thought?"

"You're back to the bar I set for you with that comment," Abby snaps. "Thank you for meeting my expectations."

"Well there's something I thought I'd never hear." Marcus enters her space for a moment, holding her gaze with a small quirk of his mouth. "Seems I failed to last time."

"What's that supposed to mean?" She thinks she knows where he's going. She doesn’t like it.

"It means," Marcus drags out, climbing the stairs to his lean-to and circling the porch, "that apparently one date was enough for you to decide I'd never meet your lofty expectations."

"What kind of person wears board shorts on a date?!" Abby explodes immediately. _The absolute nerve of the man_.

"It's Central America! It's hot!" Marcus descends the stairs again with a wrench in hand and parks himself back in front of his bike. "What kind of diet doesn't allow tequila?"

"All of them, actually." Abby has him there. The reluctant smile of his lips confirms it. “We only went out a week ago, Marcus. Give me time."

“I know you need time.” Kane says. “And twenty years of friendship isn’t going to be erased if you decide you don’t want to date me. I’m really not the jerk you build me up to be. Well, anymore. Most of the time."

“Seventeen of those years were borderline hostile rivalry, and you know it." Marcus had always been more Jake's friend than hers, but she had enjoyed picking a fight with him on occasion. And then Jake had died, and Thelonius had brought the scruffy-faced man in front of her in to tame the new batch of raptors, and suddenly Abby had a real friend in Marcus, too. Even if they still argued non-stop.

"You have a point.” Marcus drops the wrench on the ground and gets back up to face her once more. He's a lot closer than he was before. A small part—okay, maybe a large part—of Abby doesn't mind. "How can I help you, Abby?”

“We have an attraction—“

“I like to think so.”

“I’m talking about the dinosaurs, Kane.”

“Marcus,” he corrects immediately. He knows she’s trying to distance herself from him, and she’s both annoyed and pleased that he’s noticed.

“Marcus. I need you to come take a look at something. A new species we’ve made.” Abby swats at a fly buzzing around her head; the damn things grew to the size of rats out here. Marcus’ quick reflexes snap it from the air before she realizes what has happened. 

“You just went and made a new dinosaur?” He looks a little smug as he flicks the fly away.

“Yeah, it’s kinda what we do here.” Abby watches him walk away to his workbench and take a swig from the undoubtedly warm coke he’s been nursing. He’s constantly moving, like a caged animal, all easy limbs and pent up energy that he masks with a blasé attitude. “The exhibit opens to the public in three weeks. Thelonius wanted me to consult with you.”

“Why me?”

“I guess Thelonius thinks that since you can control the raptors—“

“See, it’s all about control with you. I don’t control the raptors. Lincoln doesn’t control the raptors. It’s a relationship. Based on mutual respect." 

Abby sighs. 

“Can we just focus on the asset, please?” 

“The asset?” Oh, Abby knew that would get him going, she should have worded that differently. “Look, I get it. You’re in charge out here, you gotta make a lot of tough decisions. And you’ve made it very clear these are not real dinosaurs to you. But they are real animals. They’re alive.”

“I’m fully aware they’re alive. I spent most of my life around the dead ones, I can tell the difference, thank you.”

“You made them in a test tube, but they don’t know that. They’re thinking, ‘I gotta eat. I gotta hunt. I gotta…’” Marcus lifts his hand into the air and pumps his fist a little at her. “You can relate to at least one of those things, right?”

His arms flex a little as he finishes his speech, and Abby finds herself walking a little closer, crowding in a bit farther until she can look up at him and meet his eyes with her steady gaze. His pupils dilate at her proximity. He’s not trying to intimidate her, or even make her uncomfortable, but he is trying to rile her up-- she’s the goddamn head of this park and even though she really, really likes the way the smirk on his face is highlighted by the scar on his lip, she’s not about to let him tease her out of her mission.

“I’ll be in the car, _Kane_.” Abby turns on her heel and heads for the car, leaving him flustered in her wake.

 


	2. Second Iteration

  
SECOND ITERATION  
“With subsequent drawings of the fractal curve, sudden changes may appear.” –Ian Malcolm, _God Creates Dinosaurs_

 

* * *

 

Marcus is borderline furious when he sees the paddock of the Indominus Rex for himself. Now matter how adorable it was to hear Abby repeat its ridiculous name as she spoke, he was firmly irritated at her nonchalance over the isolation of the massive dinosaur. His raptors are part of a pack, a family, and well-socialized—the Indominus is completely alone. Its most positive experience in life thus far involves the crane used to feed it.

Which may explain why it’s currently a no-show.

“You used to have more respect for dinosaurs,” Marcus sighs, hands on his hips as he looks out at the paddock. He wanders down the corridor to the window at the end of the hallway.

“These are not dinosaurs.” Abby’s voice is tired and angry, her stance closed off from what he assumes is nervousness while she watches the still trees. “These are genetically created theme park attractions. Real dinosaurs were nothing like these animals. I spent my academic life studying them.”

As much as he feels for her apparent disenchantment at the reality of the creatures she’d dedicated her profession to—as well as the loss of her husband to the same creatures, which he knows plays a large role in his own relationship with her—Marcus can’t shake the unease that Abby has closed off all emotional engagement to the dinosaurs she’s in charge of. He can’t imagine not feeling anything for his raptors; Blue, Charlie, Delta, and Echo weren’t his pets in any stretch of the imagination, but they were like his pack, in a way. Which made the insinuation from InGen’s current security chief, Cage Wallace, that they intended for them to be used as military weapons all the more menacing.

“That doesn’t make these ones any less alive.” Marcus squints at the far wall—there, next to the iron-clad gate, are massive, snow-white gashes in the rock. “Were those claw marks always there?”

Abby stops tapping the iPad on the stand in front of her in an attempt to rouse the secretive beast and turns her head to look at him. She approaches him slowly, heels clicking, eyes alighting on the scratches dug into the paddock.

“You don’t think…oh, my God.” Marcus looks back at her terrified face. If she hadn’t been so stubborn, if she’d just stopped the creation of this at all...“She has an implant in her back, I can track it from the control room.”

Abby’s already on the move, quick to action as always, but this time clearly a little too late. Marcus gazes out at the scratches with dread sitting heavy in his chest.

 

* * *

 

The lineup for the Gyrospheres has to be half a mile long. Clarke almost feels bad as she and Lexa slip quietly up to the front, where their VIP armbands give them front-of-the-line access to any ride they choose.

Lexa leans her hip against Clarke as she looks out at the green expanse of the Gallimimus Valley. They’d left Raven outside the Innovation Centre while she went back to work, promising that she’d meet them later for dinner with Abby in tow, no matter what appointments she had to cancel to get them there.

“Did you know they figured out a way to preserve the DNA of the dinosaurs?” Lexa asks, watching the group of girls head of them enter their own Gyrosphere. “So even if the amber mines dry up, they’ll still be able to make new ones.”

“Wow, you are such a nerd.” Clarke laughs. "Aren't you supposed to be aloof and mysterious? All I see is a dinosaur fanatic in tiny shorts right now."

“I can be all those things at once. I'm a multifaceted woman.” Lexa bumps her shoulder against Clarke’s. "Plus, you dropped out of medical school to major in Art History."

“Okay, so we’re a nerdy couple. Should we get matching jackets? Nerd One and Nerd Two? If lost, please return to Lexa/I am Lexa t-shirts?” Clarke steps forward as the gates finally swing open in front of them to allow them access to their own glass sphere.

“Well, we already have the matching VIP arm bands. Let’s start there.” 

The two climb into the pod and strap themselves in with the Jurassic World emblazoned seatbelts. Clarke stifles a laugh as Jimmy Fallon comes on screen to guide them through their trip through the Valley.

“How did your mom get Jimmy Fallon to do this?!” Lexa asks, genuinely shocked. 

The pod begins to glide forward.

“He’s friends with Jaha. And my mom is a very persuasive woman.”

Lexa smiles. “So that’s where you get it from.”

Behind them, the pods cease rolling in, and the crowd begins to disperse. Clarke furrows her brow in puzzlement and begins to steer their sphere towards the Triceratops Territory. Whatever's going on, she's sure her mom will handle it.

 

* * *

 

Marcus’ heart races 500 miles a minute as his boots crunch over the underbrush of the Indominus Rex paddock. He and the paddock operator approach a nervous-looking engineer waiting for them at the site of the gashes Marcus spotted earlier; the marks seem even more ominous from their vulnerable positions on the ground, but Marcus had looked time and time again for the supposedly fifty foot monstrosity that Wu and Tsing had cooked up, and hadn’t spotted a hint of it. He still doesn’t.

He reaches out towards the wall and runs his hands along the white streaks in the rock. They’re not as deep as he would have assumed they’d be. An animal that climbed a structure this high would have had to dig in, find purchase, maybe take entire chunks out of the wall. These marks are crosshatched in with almost artful intent.

“That wall’s 40 feet high. Do you really think she could have climbed out?” The operator stands next to him with his eyes on the top of the wall, where the dinosaur apparently climbed over and disappeared into the jungle. Marcus feels uneasy once more.

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“What kind of dinosaur they cooked up in that lab.”

 

* * *

 

The dirt road spins and spits underneath the tires of her car as Abby pushes the Mercedes far past its limits. She has her phone to her ear, trying not to sound panicked when she connects with the control room.

"Get Asset Containment out to the Indominus paddock, now!" She addresses both Monty and Octavia, who she can hear scrambling in the background. "And check the thermal cameras again! We need to know how that thing got out."

Her foot presses so hard on the gas that her heel is flat against the floor.

“Wait, what the hell?” Monty blurts out. “It’s in the cage.”

“No. That’s impossible. I was just there.” Please, god, let her not have been outsmarted by a theme park monster.

“Abby, I’m telling you, she’s in the cage! Look—wait a second, there are people in there.”

Fear burns through Abby like white-hot fire. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t be that stupid. Her breath hitches—

“Get them out of there. Now. NOW!”

 

* * *

 

The hiss of a broken radio broadcast interrupts Marcus’ rapid train of thought. The walkie on the shoulder of the operator pops and blips with a voice rapidly attempting to yell through it. He looks around, suddenly on an even higher alert than before (if that’s at all possible, because he feels like he’s about to hit the stratosphere from the anxiety sitting his his chest). If the goddamn island had better radio reception, they would not be listening to frantic static. Marcus had noticed the problem multiple times, but never really did much about it; the only person he ever talked to on the radios was Lincoln, and their private line reached easily from the beach to the raptor paddock. He’d just let it slip.

He regrets that now.

“Paddock 11, do you copy?!” The voice of Octavia Blake finally bursts through. She sounds terrified, and Marcus suddenly knows this is about to get really, really bad.

“Yeah, what’s the problem?” The operator asks. 

“It’s in the cage! It’s in there with you!”

Marcus doesn’t think. He yells “GO!” and starts to run, heart hammering, feet hitting the ground and slipping, finding purchase in the grass—

And then she’s suddenly there. Two giant feet, massive claws, and a mottled-grey underbelly is all that Marcus sees before he skids to a stop and pivots, sprinting back the other direction with the engineer beside him, then behind him, then…gone in a choked-off scream.

He doesn’t look back. It’s survival of the fastest right now, and he’s only the fastest as long as he keeps moving. The operator gets the gate open and shoves his way through it; relief and fear mix through Marcus in a nauseating combination when the door halts, the operator through it, and then begins to close—he needs to make it out, but the Indominus can’t. Her feet pound against the dirt and shake the ground, pushing Marcus farther and farther, faster and faster towards the closing gate.

He makes it.

Elation doesn’t even have time enter his system as he throws himself outside the paddock and across the gravel, because he can hear the screeching and twisting of metal that indicates that not only has he escaped the cage, but the Indominus has, too. And he’s not fast enough to out run a fully-grown dinosaur.

The ground slips beneath his boots. Marcus runs full tilt for a parked vehicle and hits the gravel rocks in a slide; he hurls his body underneath the truck, flips onto his belly to watch the bird-like feet of the dinosaur step ominously out of the gate for the first time in its life.

The ground shakes from the weight of the massive animal. The operator who opened the gate is curled against the front of one of the other trucks and trembling silently as the dinosaur ventures from the paddock. The Indominus moves around the truck, sniffing with a head the size of the car itself, creeping around the side of the car with a clumsy grace of an animal just stretching its wings for the first time.

Abruptly, the image in front of Marcus' eyes is replaced by the blur of the truck flying straight at him. He covers his head against the concussive force of the car flipping onto its side, glass shattering and scattering along the ground under the weight of the vehicle crushing in on itself. He looks up just in time to see the operator staring at him with resigned helplessness before the man is snatched up inside a gigantic mouth and crushed between the Indominus’ sharp teeth. 

The rotting stench of carnivore hits his nostrils. His raptors didn’t smell like this; the scent was subtler, often masked by the fresh scent of the trees and the salt of the ocean surrounding their pen. This is rawer, more putrid, stinking of newly eaten flesh and something he thinks might be death. The smell—the smell.

_The smell_.

Marcus rolls over and pulls a knife from his belt. He grabs the fuel line in one hand and cuts it cleanly in two to spill gasoline out and onto his chest. He drenches himself in the liquid until it’s sticky on his skin and he reeks of the vile scent, until he’s blinking it out of his eyes and tasting it as trickles into his nose and mouth.

A blast of hot, humid air hits him like the strongest gust of wind he’s ever felt. The Indominus has hunched down on her hands to stick her snout right next to Marcus’ sweat and oil soaked face. She growls low in her throat, nostrils dilating, jaw opening to expose rows of pointed, jagged teeth yellowed with the stain of blood.

His life doesn’t flash before his eyes. His childhood doesn’t come back to him. Instead, Marcus only thinks of his gentle mother, Vera, and of his ex, Callie; he thinks of Lincoln back at the raptor paddock, clueless of what could befall him. He thinks of Lincoln’s tiny and fierce girlfriend, Octavia, and how she’d threatened on multiple occasions to kick his ass if he ever let anything happen to Lincoln. He thinks of Thelonius, without whom he would not be in this mess in the first place. He thinks of Jake, years dead, a death Marcus hasn’t been able to reconcile since the day he learned of it. And he thinks of Abby. Abby, who is strong, and who is vulnerable, and who loved what she did once before life had gotten in the way. Abby, who he was going to have very strong words with if he survived this.

Abby, whose face is the only thing Marcus can see as he lets out a long, shaky sigh of relief at the feeling of the Indominus huffing one final time and then crashing away into the jungle.

 

* * *

 

The eyes of every single one of her staff fall on Abby as she enters the control room. The facial expressions turned towards her range in emotion: some look terrified, some reserved, some borderline hostile at her arrival. Abby squares her shoulders; it wouldn’t do to fall apart now, not when the lives of over 20,000 people now rest in her hands.

“Everyone remain calm,” she says, approaching Octavia and Monty’s stations. “The implant will shock it if it gets too close to a perimeter fence.”

“Uh,” Monty says, “okay, but it’s moving really fast.”

Octavia puts her hand to her ear across from him and adjusts her mic. “This is Control, put out a park-wide alert—“

“Whoa whoa whoa, hang up that damn phone, please.” Thelonius Jaha descends from the upper echelons of the room to halt Octavia in her tracks. He startles Abby; she was too busy with Marcus to realize the sharply dressed man had flown back in. “Have Asset Containment capture it quietly. The very existence of this park is predicated on our ability to handle incidents like this. It was an eventuality, okay?”

“You should put that in the brochure.” Octavia pipes up from her station, not making eye contact, but clearly furious. “‘Eventually, one of these things will eat somebody.’”

Abby takes a deep breath. “That paddock is four miles from the nearest fence. ACU can handle this. No one else is going to get—"

“Eaten?” Monty interrupts. 

Abby prays that this isn't the biggest mistake she'll ever make.

 

* * *

 

“Look at the Edmontosaurus, Clarke!” Lexa has her hand over Clarke’s own as she steers them through the Triceratops Territory. She points at leathery, brown and green dinosaur with a snout that extends forward, much like a duck’s. 

“Isn’t that an Iguanodon?” Clarke asks her clearly thrilled girlfriend. Lexa shoots her a stern look that makes Clarke think she may have just said one of the most offensive things the other woman has ever heard.

“Edmontosaurus is smaller than an Iguanodon, Clarke. And it doesn’t half a fifth digit on its hand, like an Iguanodon does.”

“Okaaay,” Clarke draws out, moving her gaze away from the now controversial herbivore to look up at the valley. “But they’re both hadrosaurs, right? With that duck bill?”

Lexa turns her head to look at Clarke in complete shock.

“What? I watched _The Land Before Time_ as a kid. And my mom does run a dinosaur theme park. I can be cool, too.”

"This is the opposite of cool. Don't you dare tell anyone I got excited about dinosaurs."

"Oh, I am telling absolutely everyone, don't worry." 

Lexa rolls her eyes with a smile on her face. She uses her hand on Clarke’s to move the pod forward again, up towards where a herd of Apatosauruses drink at a small pond.

Clarke's eyes catch two vehicles speeding quickly up the ridge road, and Clarke wonders what fresh hell her mother is dealing with right now.

 

* * *

 

ACU closes in on the now-still beacon at the same time that Marcus manages to arrive in the control room. He’s had time to really ruminate what happened on the way over (fumes from the gasoline making his head dizzy as he drove), and he’s absolutely spitting mad as he strides past the protesting guard and into the heart of Jurassic World.

“What the hell happened out there?!” Marcus snaps at a stunned Abby. “There are thermal cameras all over that paddock. She did not just disappear!”

Security holds him back from Abby, who turns her back to him. She can’t be shutting him out now, when he only just survived her monstrosity of a park attraction to run all the way here to yell at her.

He sees her shoulders lift in a sigh.

“It must have been a technical malfunction,” she says, turning back around to meet his eyes. Marcus stalks towards her immediately.

“Were you not watching? She marked up that wall as a distraction. She wanted us to think she escaped.”

“Hold on.” Abby speaks quickly as she steps in to meet his advance into the room. “We are talking about an animal, here.”

“A highly intelligent animal. These things survived millions of years on this planet before we came along, do you really think they were all dumb, docile herbivores? I thought you were a palaeontologist.”

“I am a palaeontologist. A doctor. I didn’t stop being one when I took this job, Kane.”

“Marcus,” he corrects immediately. “And I beg to differ.”

“300 meters to the beacon.” Octavia interrupts. Marcus finally lifts his gaze away from Abby to look at the massive screen in front of him, where the images of a fleet of men and women swing out of two trucks with weapons in their hands.

“You’re going after her with non-lethals?” Marcus asks, incredulous. 

Jaha speaks for the first time since Marcus arrived. He turns to look at his old friend, hoping for some measure of sense—

“We have 26 million dollars invested in that asset, we can’t just kill it, Marcus.” Jaha says, raising his hand to indicate the screen.

“Those men are going to die.” Marcus looks at Abby and sees a flash of fear on her face. She thinks so, too. “You need to call this mission off, right now. Call it off—“

“You are not in control, here!” Abby snaps, voice raised above his. 

She’s right. But she’s also so, so wrong, because she’s not, either. And they both know it.

One of the men on screen comes over top of the beacon and picks up a hunk of flesh; the beacon blinks from its place embedded inside the scaly mass, the beep clipping along in the rhythm of a horrifying heartbeat.

“What is that?” Jaha asks.

“It’s her tracking device.” Marcus is in awe of the animal that has now played them for a second time. “She clawed it out.”

“How would it know to do that?” Abby’s voice has a wonder in it Marcus feels, too. She can’t help but be fascinated. She’s a scientist.

Slow-creeping horror dawns upon Marcus. “She remembered where they put it in.”

Screams follow his words. The ACU team lead, Gustus, becomes a flatline on the screen in front of them. The telltale roar of the Indominus heralds its arrival alongside the shouts of the rest of the ACU, the shock and spark of the weapons as they’re fired adding into he cacophony of sound that assaults the control room.

A man name John’s heart rate flattens, and then another named Atom’s does, too. One by one, they’re picked off by the Indominus and crushed or eaten between her teeth, until only a few scattered guards—including Monroe, Octavia’s friend—remain. 

Marcus turns back to look at Abby’s heartbroken face.

“Evacuate the island."

Abby meets his eyes, resigned, the screams of her people echoing in the room. She puts up one more half-hearted protest:

“We’d never reopen.” Marcus can see she doesn’t have the same heat in her voice that she did just minutes ago, but it doesn’t stop him from needing to drive his point straight home. She _has_ to understand.

“You made a genetic hybrid. Raised it in captivity. She is seeing all of this for the first time. She does not even know what she is. She will kill everything that moves.”

Jaha crosses his arms over his chest in discomfort. “You think the animal is contemplating its own existence?”

“She is learning where she fits in the food chain, and I’m not sure you want her to figure that out. Now, asset containment can use live ammunition in an emergency situation. You have an M1-34 in your armoury. Put it on a chopper, and take this thing out. Now, Abby.”

“We are _not_ doing that. We have families here. I’m not going to turn this place into some kind of a war zone.” Abby’s soft heart always chooses the wrong time to emerge, even beneath her steely tone.

“You already have.”

“Marcus, armed warfare is not really an option right now!” Abby protests.

Marcus snaps. He slams his hands down on the top of Monty’s workstation, scattering his collection of toy dinosaurs all over the keyboard and floor. He marches past the most infuriating woman he’s ever met and gets right in Jaha’s face.

“I would have a word with Wu and Tsing.” Marcus does finally accept one of the things Abby has been saying all along. “That thing out there, that’s no dinosaur.”

Because it’s much, much worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 3 will be up soon! THANKS, GUYS!


	3. Third Iteration

THIRD ITERATION  
“Details emerge more clearly as the fractal curve is redrawn.” –Ian Malcolm, _God Creates Dinosaurs_

 

* * *

 

“Can you imagine if that thing was a carnivore?” Clarke gazes up at the massive Apatosaurus as it walks beside them, her eyes round with wonder at the creature.

“A T-Rex is that big,” Lexa supplies, helpfully. “Well, this park’s T-Rex is, anyway. We should go see it after this, I’d love to see them feed it.”

“Morbid, Lexa—"

Clarke is interrupted by the screen on their Gyrosphere flashing to the Jurassic World logo, with “RIDE CLOSED” scrawled across it. A friendly English voice announces: “Due to technical difficulties, all our exhibits are now closed. Please disembark all rides and return to the resort.”

“Really?!” Clarke addresses the screen, as though it has the answers she’s looking for, and not an image of Jimmy Fallon being sprayed with Dilophosaurus venom. “We just started!”

“Clarke,” Lexa says, grabbing the control and steering the pod not toward the front of the ride, but farther out into the field. “I bet we can stay out a little longer. We’re VIPs, right? Your mom gave us special passes and everything. Let’s live a little. Take a walk on the wild side. Hang out with some dinosaurs in an entirely safe manner.”

“Lexa…” Clarke really, really isn’t sure about this. She’s never been much of a rule follower, per se (a trait she also inherited from her mother, and her father, too, come to think of it), but they were in a theme park full of dinosaurs, in a tiny glass globe…

“Five more minutes, I swear. I just want to see a Stegosaurus up close, and then we can…go…what the hell?”

Lexa has her head turned away from Clarke, staring at something she can’t see until Lexa turns the pod to face an open patch of fence. Clarke’s pocket begins to vibrate.

Abby’s name and face comes up on her screen.

“Hi, mom!” All she hears is static. Her mother’s garbled voice barely makes it through. “Mom, I can’t really hear you. We’re in one of the hamster balls.”

More static.

“Hello? Mom? Just text me, okay?” Clarke hangs up. When she looks around, Lexa has parked them in front of the open gate with a small smirk on her face.

“Wanna go off-roading?”

It isn't really a question when the thrill of adventure has flooded Clarke's veins.

"Absolutely."

 

* * *

 

Abby runs for the Innovation Centre.

Clarke clearly hadn’t gotten the message, and try as she might, no text she sent would go through, either. They Gyrospheres had terrible reception—it was a common park complaint, which Abby had already investigated and deemed a necessary evil; thinning the glass would decrease its protection by too large a percentage to ignore. Why the hell did she and Lexa have to be in the Gyrospheres now, of all the times in the world? Why couldn’t they feeding the baby dinosaurs, or, hell, going for a couple’s sail on the Jungle River Cruise?

The obnoxiously branded Samsung Centre (“We need corporate sponsorship, Abby, or we'll never keep the doors open,” which Abby wholly resented three years ago, because there were _dinosaurs_ in the park, but just makes a sad amount of sense now) is absolutely full of people, all milling about disgruntledly now that they can’t ride any of the attractions in the park. Abby scans the crowd for the dark green shirt and black jeans she'd seen Marcus in on the screen in the control room—

“Abby!” Her name directs her eyes past the holo of an Apatosaurus currently delighting a group of small children, and there he is, looking for her, too; she runs straight through the happily trumpeting image to the man she is sure is still mad at her, but who will also do exactly what she needs him to right now.

“Marcus!” Abby is completely out of breath from her frantic run from the control room. “I need you.”

“Okay,” he agrees, immediately, looking down at her with a ‘ready for anything’ look on his face. No witty remarks, no teasing, just an intrinsic understanding that, in this moment, Abby needs him more than she needs his attitude.

“I need your help. Clarke and her girlfriend, they’re out in the valley, and if anything happens to them—“

Marcus comes in closer and takes her arm to direct her away from the main throng of people to somewhere quieter.

“How long have they been out there?” He asks.

“I don’t know, less than an hour, but the call wouldn’t go through and ACU can’t get to them. I have to go get them myself.”

Marcus looks down at her, determined and already calculating out a plan, she can tell.

“Let’s go.”

He takes her arm, and Abby follows him out into the park.

 

* * *

 

This is a Bad Idea. Clarke knows it’s a bad idea, but…Lexa looks so happy, and she’s so beautiful when she’s happy (and when she’s sad, when she’s angry, when she’s laughing—all the time, actually, and _wow_ she has it bad), and it’s really, really hard to say no to someone who looks at you like you’re her favourite puzzle to solve. And, in truth, this bad idea might be more fun than rolling through the grass with some docile herbivores. Diving in head first was the way she'd gotten by so far, and hey, she was still around to tell the tale.

“We’re going to get arrested,” Clarke pokes fun as Lexa drives them further into the jungle. “By the dinosaur police. How are you gonna become a politician with that on your resume?” 

“I’m sure the very real dinosaur police will let us off with a warning—look, Clarke! An Ankylosaurus!” Lexa stops the pod as them come upon a small group of armoured dinosaurs grazing amongst the leaves. “Four of them!”

Clarke furrows her brow.

“Five, Lexa.” She squints at the glinting of the glass in the sunlight. “I see…five…”

There are five. Four (relatively) harmless Ankylosaurs, and one massive, terrifying set of teeth that are the size of Clarke’s head. The jaw of the animal opens wide in the reflection of the glass, and an ear-splitting roar shakes Clarke to her very bones.

“GO!” She screams, grabbing Lexa’s hand and shoving the Gyrosphere forward. They get about ten feet before they’re thrown forward and into the air with the force of a kick from the unidentifiable dinosaur chasing them; the sphere lands and bounces with a crack and keeps spinning them like some mad version of a teacup ride. Clarke feels Lexa’s arm reach out and pin her back into her seat to keep her from whipping forward when a massive, spiked tail of an Ankylosaurus smashes into the side of the sphere and sends them shooting forward once more.

Clarke can’t hear anything but the sound of her own screams mixed with the roars of the dinosaur chasing them. She slams her hand on the joystick of the pod in a desperate attempt to control their spiral into the trees, manages to actually stop the pod for five seconds before Lexa is yelling “RIGHT, RIGHT!” and Clarke has shoved the pod as far as it can go away from the advancing bipedal monster—a stray tail smacks into the glass, halts their movement, and then all Clarke sees is blurs of brown and green. The Gyrosphere smashes violently into a tree and topples, impossibly, upside down.

All the blood rushes to Clarke’s head. She and Lexa look at each other, and then back in front of them, where the nightmare of some mutated T-Rex flips a squealing Ankylosaurus over with her clawed arms and proceeds to snap its neck. 

“What the hell is that thing?” Lexa asks, voice shaking.

“You don’t know?!” Clarke whips her head around to glance at her always-knowledgeable girlfriend. 

“It’s your mom’s park! How do you not know?” Lexa’s eyes are wide as saucers, her chest heaving with panicked breaths. 

Clarke’s head starts spinning through all the conversations she’d had with her mom before arriving. Abby had indeed mentioned something about a new attraction, a hybrid of sorts—Indominus, Clarke pulls from her last call with Abby. Indominus Rex, a mix of a T-Rex and something else Abby hadn’t been at liberty to say. Clarke remembers rolling her eyes at her mother’s secrecy; now she can’t help but wonder—did Abby know they’d created a monster? And that the monster was trying to eat them alive?

Below them, Clarke’s phone begins to vibrate.

Both women begin to reach for it immediately. Abby’s name and picture appear on the screen, her smiling face and curled hair the only thing Clarke can see as her fingers reach desperately for any connection to her mother.

“Clarke,” Lexa hisses.

“I’ve almost got it!” Clarke’s fingers brush the phone, once, twice—

“Clarke!” 

The terror in Lexa’s voice forces Clarke’s head up. Her still vibrating phone is immediately forgotten, because right there, in front of them, is the cat-like eye of the Indominus Rex. The beast blinks slowly, once, before pulling back to show Clarke and Lexa her teeth, the jaw opening wide with a low growl emanating from her throat. Lexa grabs hold of Clarke’s hand in a grip so tight that she feels her bones crush against one another.

The dinosaur stands up on its hind legs and towers over their pod. Two great, clawed arms come down over the top, pulling and pushing at the ball like a toddler reaching for a glass of water—all clumsy, but calculated, with a purpose, determined to get inside as quickly as possible. She lifts one arm and slams her claws down onto the front of the sphere, one talon piercing through the supposedly bullet proof (but not, apparently, gigantic dinosaur claw proof) and opening her jaws wide, teeth bared—

The entire front part of the Gyrosphere goes into the Indominus' mouth. Her teeth slip and slide across the glass as Clarke and Lexa watch, horrified, at the cracking and giving of their last line of protection under the weight of her jaw. She lifts them up, up into the air and then slams them back down; Clarke’s head throbs where her head impacts the back of her seat, repeatedly, her ears ringing. The glass shatters around and beneath them with each smash. They only have seconds to live, seconds before the jaws crush the sphere completely…

Clarke looks across at Lexa, down at her own seatbelt, and then at the inky blackness of the dinosaur’s mouth. She releases Lexa’s hand and hits the buckle of both of their seatbelt right as they hit the ground once more; both women topple out of the sphere in a tangle of limbs. Clarke catches a flash of jagged edges of the destroyed ride vehicle descending again and pulls Lexa close, trying to make them both as small as possible to allow the shattered opening of the ball to descend around them one more time.

“RUN!” Clarke screams the minute they’re free.

The two take off at a sprint. The Indominus follows quickly, running after them so heavily that the ground shakes beneath their pounding feet as they burst through the tree line and run full-tilt through a field of tall grass. Behind them, the dinosaur lets out a massive roar.

Lexa skids to a stop at the end of the field. Before them is a waterfall, rushing fast and swift into a clear pool at the bottom, and behind them the Indominus comes at them faster and harder than ever. Clarke is frozen in place in terror.

“We have to jump!” Lexa cries, head turned to watch the dinosaur advance on them.

“I can’t!” Clarke’s whole body is thrumming with adrenaline and terror. This is too much.

The ground shakes.

“Yes you can! 1, 2—“ Lexa grabs Clarke’s hand and leaps. The hot breath of the carnivore brushes at their backs, the teeth snapping closed over thin air and Clarke and Lexa plummet from the edge and plunge into the freezing cold water.

The shock of it knocks the air right out of Clarke’s lungs. She fights the instinct to inhale the water around her and begins to kick towards the surface. A hand reaches out, suddenly, for her arm, and she opens her eyes to see Lexa pulling her down and away from the rush of the falls, tugging her forward with her lungs fit to burst, until they’re in the middle of the pool and the telltale, throaty roar of the dinosaur can no longer be heard, even through the water.

All Clarke feels is ecstasy when she surfaces and takes her first breath of air. The Indominus, thankfully, is nowhere to be seen. She follows the already swimming Lexa towards the shore; they both crawl their way up the muddy ground until they’re collapsed in an exhausted heap next to one another.

“You did it,” Lexa gasps, grinning at her.

Clarke starts laughing in sheer relief. Lexa kisses her.

 

* * *

 

Marcus pushes the Mercedes’ gas pedal to the floor. The SUV speeds through the soft grass of the Gallimimus Valley, where Monty reported the last of the Gyrospheres had been tracked to before it'd gone off radar. A flash of blue catches his eye as them come up over a gentle hill—there, on the horizon, is a mass of _something_ collapsed on the hill.

He throws the car into park, grabs his gun, and climbs out with a “Stay in the car,” thrown to Abby.

But of course, it’s Abby, and so both of them make their way over to what he finally sees is a prone Apatosaurus lying in the grass. Gashes cover much of its leathery belly and neck; the poor thing is close to death, and there’s nothing Marcus can do to help. He walks the length of the dinosaur’s 12-foot neck to crouch next to its barely moving head.

Abby approaches it more slowly. She takes careful steps up while Marcus soothes the dying creature, running his hands over its face and neck in an effort to calm the distressed dinosaur. She kneels in the grass on the other side of the Apatosaurus’ head and places a timid hand on the warm skin. Her fingers brush against his over the curves and wrinkles of the dying animal’s gentle face.

The animal has one last burst of energy: it arches its neck up, scaring Abby back a bit, to let out a soft cry of anguish before Marcus catches its head back in his hands. He moves with it until the giant is lying back down on the grass, and after one final, pained whine, the dinosaur wheezes out its final breath.

Tears fill Abby’s eyes. He can see her finally understanding just what she’s been doing this whole time—what animals she’s detached herself from, what gentle creatures she wrote off because they were nothing like what she’d dreamed they’d be. He’d suspected Abby’s love for her original job (that of bones, of rock, of speculating on the behaviour of animals long dead, but so present in the public’s mind) had never dwindled, just been repressed underneath the difficulties of dealing with not only the death of her husband at their hands, but the corporate takeover of the science, as well overwhelming apathy of the general public. Her face now says what Marcus’ words once tried to convince her the opposite of, back when he was young and stupid—that her long-held hope that having empathy in the face of a world that demanded the opposite was her greatest asset, was valid, was something she could and should dig out from back under her tired armour.

Marcus looks past Abby and out onto the expanse of the Valley. He grabs his gun as his stomach fills with dread at the sight in front of him—there, coming into view as he steps forward to see over the rolling, grassy hills, are five more dead Apatosauruses. Abby’s soft gasp beside him and the covering of her mouth say everything Marcus is feeling.

“It didn’t eat them,” he says, slowly, staring at the blood-streaked ground. “It’s killing for sport.”

 

* * *

 

Abby feels like throwing up as Marcus stops the car outside the wrecked, hulking remains of a Gyrosphere. The glass is completely shattered and the bulk of the ride vehicle destroyed; Abby is terrified to approach it behind Marcus, who shoulders his gun to pull a knife from who knows where and carefully dislodge what Abby assumes is one of the teeth of the Indominus from the twisted metal frame.

Her eyes search the ground for clues—something, anything to tell her that maybe this wasn’t Clarke and Lexa’s pod, maybe it was empty, or…

Clarke’s phone.

Abby scrambles over to the cracked device. The navy blue and gold case Abby had spotted earlier is still on it, but the screen itself has been shattered. Every single fear she’s tried to keep at bay comes flooding in at once. Clarke was in the sphere, Clarke had been in trouble, Clarke had fallen prey to a monster she’d unwillingly helped create.

“Oh, no,” Abby gasped, staring at the phone clutched in her shaking hands. “Oh, god, no.”

“Hey,” Marcus quips, coming around in front of her kneeled form and squatting down to place his steady hands over her trembling ones. “Look. They made it out.”

Abby follows the tilt of his head to see two sets of footprints in the mud.

They run for the SUV. Marcus slides behind the wheel and kicks the car forward, following not only the footprints of the girls, but the large, ominous footprints of the Indominus that was clearly chasing them. When they hit the open field and the waterfall, Abby jumps out of the car and runs up along the ridge where the end of the field meets the cliff.

“Oh, my god, they jumped.” Abby whips her head around, immediately looking for a familiar flash of blonde hair. “Clarke! Lexa!”

“SHHH!” Marcus snaps, pulling her away from the edge to face him. 

“Hey! I am not one of your damn animals, or one of your soldiers—“

“Listen,” Marcus says, low, “those girls are still alive, but you and I will not be if you continue to scream like that."

Abby sighs. “I—sorry. I know. So, you can…pick up their scent, can’t you? Track their footprints?”

“I was with the Army, not the Navajo!” Marcus hisses.

“So, then what should we do? What do you suggest we do?!” Abby asks, desperately, aware that her need to find her only child is making her a little crazy.

“You get back. I’ll find them.” Marcus says.

“No. No. We’ll find them.” Abby gestures between the two of them.

“You’ll last two minutes in there. Less in those ridiculous shoes.”

Abby looks down at her feet, where her nude pumps are actually holding up great, thank you very much. She meets Marcus’ eyes once more, defiant and a little amused at his lack of faith in her balancing techniques, and swiftly un-tucks her blouse from her black pants, undoes the buttons, ties them together over her white tank top (like she swears Ellie once told her she had, back when the 90s were all about the adventurer aesthetic), and plants her hands on her hips. 

Marcus gapes at her. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m ready to go.” Abby looks up at him, shrugging.

“Oh.” Marcus pauses, hand poised in mid air while their insane situation clearly shorts out in his brain. “But let’s get one thing straight: I’m in charge out here. You do everything I say, exactly as I say it.”

“Excuse me?” Abby snaps.

“You’re still the boss, Abby,” Marcus says, gently. “This is my area, though, so follow my lead. Just relax. It’s just like taking a stroll through the woods. 65 million years ago.”

Right. As borderline attractive as the whole Indiana Jones-esque nonchalance is, Abby really isn’t in the mood. Her kid is out there. And while she may not be the most knowledgeable person in running from gigantic, man-eating dinosaurs, she does know a thing or two about doing what’s needed, even if it’s not what’s safe—she is a mom, after all.

Abby marches past him and out into the field.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More tomorrow!


	4. Fourth Iteration

FOURTH ITERATION  
“Inevitably, underlying instabilities begin to appear.” –Ian Malcolm, _God Creates Dinosaurs_

 

* * *

 

Clarke and Lexa keep up a steady jog through the wet leaves of the jungle around them as they (hopefully) move farther and farther away from the Indominus. A bit of white up ahead of them draws Clarke's attention; she slows her pace to stop in front of what she recognizes as a Jurassic World worker’s helmet, cracked clean in half with blood around the rim.

“Jesus,” Lexa breathes, panting from their run. 

Clarke drops the helmet at her feet to sweep her eyes across their surroundings. Parked off to the side—well, “parked”, it’s really smashed against a tree—is an official Jurassic World transport truck twisted into pieces. And past it, almost buried in nature’s reclamation of its own territory, is a pair of handsome (if weathered) wooden doors with an egg shaped door handle still mercifully intact.

“No way,” Clarke whispers. She reaches for Lexa’s hand and pulls her along to a place she never thought she’d see. “Lexa, it’s the original park.”

Together, they push the once grand doors open. The inside of the Jurassic Park Visitor’s Centre is dark and dank, absolutely covered in plants that are dripping with water. It smells strongly of decay and dirt, and the only sunlight that comes in from the yellowed skylights is choppy and dim. Still, there is something almost otherworldly in the absolute stillness of the original visitor’s centre—she and Lexa may possibly be the first people to step foot in it after the disaster in the 90's. 

"I always wanted to see this place. I thought they tore it down.” Lexa ducks under some low-hanging vines to run her hand over what Clarke recognizes as the bones of a T-Rex head. It must have been part of a showpiece, or maybe a decoration to welcome new visitors to the park, because the bones are still shiny and brown, not weathered and porous like the bones her mother used to unearth. Lexa picks up a particularly large bone and glances at it for a moment before reaching for a buried bit of banner with the word ‘Earth’ emblazoned on it. She tucks both under her arm and digs around in her back jean shorts pocket for second before producing a Jurassic World branded lighter from it.

“Lexa,” Clarke says, staring at her girlfriend. “Why do you have a lighter?”

“It was in the welcome basket in our room. You were too busy asking Raven 500 questions about the Mosasaurus to notice.”

“And you decided you need it, because…”

“Impromptu s’mores cookout, of course.” Lexa ties the torn piece of banner around the bone she holds, then lights the whole thing on fire to create a type of torch.

“And the real reason is…”

“That airport security took mine, and like to be prepared for anything.” Lexa waves the flames from side to side a bit. “Anya always told me to have at least one weapon on me at all times.”

“Your sister _is_ a weapon,” Clarke sighs. She can’t fault Lexa’s logic, though—her penchant for being armed (usually with a small butterfly knife) had saved them a number of times when they’d locked themselves out of their apartment and had been forced to pick the lock.

They wander through the halls of the crumbling building on light feet. Here, a mural of a Velociraptor is uncovered by Clarke’s hand, there, a rotted away door with ‘RESTRICTED’ scratched out across it. They finally arrive at a dusty, open room the back of the building, in what Clarke assumes must have been an old garage for the cars that John Hammond hadn’t had run on the electricity of the park.

Lexa circles the hood of one of the old Jeeps with her brow furrowed. Clarke strips off the denim button up she’d chosen to throw on over her tank top and heads for the latches on either side of the car.

“Do not tell Raven those summers she dragged me to junk yards are finally paying off,” she warns, and pops the hood.

Clarke works quickly. She hauls the rusted-out battery from the engine and replaces it with one of the (less rusted) ones lined up on the wall. She checks the starter (in okay condition), the oil (needs changing), the spark plugs (blessedly intact), every possible thing they’d need to get the car rolling and get their asses out of dodge. 

Lexa parks herself in the front seat on Clarke’s instruction. Clarke tightens the last loose cap, then gives Lexa the go-ahead to try and turn the engine over.

“It works!” Clarke cries out, happily, the engine roaring to life. Lexa waves her over and pulls her down by her shirt, kissing her squarely on the mouth out of sheer relief.

“Let’s get out of here,” she smiles after releasing Clarke. 

“Wait, are you driving?” Clarke asks. “Because I’m pretty sure neither of us knows where we’re going.”

“Clarke Griffin, you underestimate me. I memorized the map of this Park when I was 13 years old.” Lexa says. She plucks a very old, very dusty pair of aviators off the dashboard and promptly wipes them clean on her plaid shirt.

“Really?” Clarke climbs in the passenger seat and slams the door. A cloud of dust blooms out the side of the car.

“No.” Lexa smirks at Clarke, sliding the glasses on. She hits the gas, and they take off into the jungle.

 

* * *

 

The roar of a gas-powered Jeep pulls both Marcus and Abby up short. 

“Clarke,” Abby gasps. She takes off running, Marcus in tow with his gun at the ready. 

The tire tracks lead to the back of the old park’s Visitor’s Centre. Abby feels her heels gain traction as she reaches the concrete flat of the garage, where a recently vacated spot sits next to an old, broken down Jeep from the first Jurassic Park.

Marcus ducks down and swipes a denim button-up from the ground.

“Is this one of theirs?” 

“Clarke’s.” Abby takes it from him and clutches the fabric tight in her fingers. Beside her, Marcus is walking up the length of the dilapidated Jeep to approach the rotted-out workbench full of old batteries, tools, and a pair of bright green night vision goggles.

“How did they even get one of these things started?” He asks, bewilderment in his voice. 

“Raven used to make Clarke restore old cars with her during the summer.” Abby feels no small measure of pride at her daughter’s continued resourcefulness. And though she’s scared for both girls, out there alone in the park, a tiny part of her is looking forward to the look on Raven’s face when she finds out those long, hot days of listening to Clarke whine were actually worth it.

Marcus is busy studying an old battery that Abby assumes Clarke pulled out of the now-working and missing Jeep. He drops the thing with a _thunk_ next to the glasses and approaches the second car, clearly intending to pop the hood and attempt what Clarke had quickly done.

The ground shakes.

Abby inhales sharply, adrenaline flooding through her system after the brief respite the discovery of Clarke and Lexa’s cleverness had given her. She scrambles over to where Marcus crouches in front of the hood and grabs into his already outstretched arm, lets him pull her behind him as dust and leaves begin tumbling from the ceiling. 

They wait. One second, two, in which Abby thinks that maybe, impossibly, they aren’t in danger, that Marcus’ body shielding her own really isn’t necessary, that it was just a strong gust of wind, or, god, even a small earthquake (she’s that desperate for an answer that isn’t “a massive carnivorous dinosaur is in the vicinity and wants to eat you”). Anything would be better than the terrifying reality she prays isn't creeping into the garage.

The telltale growl of the Indominus is the only warning they get before they’re both ducking in front of the hood of the jeep, pressing tightly together, side-by-side against the dusty grill. Marcus leans out a little to look down the side of the car, and Abby realizes that he’s left his gun propped against it--it’s of absolutely no use to them now.

Another thump. Whatever Marcus sees (and Abby can venture a pretty good guess as to what it is) causes him to immediately snap back to the front of the car. He looks over at her, mouthing for her to keep as quiet as possible, reaching out for her shaking hand to clasp it tightly in both of his.

Abby closes her eyes. The stench of death enters her nostrils, and then a burst of hot air hits her skin. The Indominus can’t get her whole head in the garage; the great skull pushes against the car in a bid to get them to move, to startle, to run where she can pick them off as easy prey. Abby turns her head away and refuses to look at the beast—she can feel Marcus doing the same, turning into her, hand no doubt buckling under the tight grip of Abby’s fingers.

The Indominus withdraws. Marcus lets go of her hand to bend around the side of the car to retrieve his forgotten gun. He settles back next to her with a nod: the dinosaur has indeed retreated. They sit in silence for a moment to catch their collective breath.

The roof collapses.

They’re up and moving at once, scrambling across debris and dead leaves to get away from the dinosaur that has broken through the fragile woodwork of the roof of the garage to get a better angle at its prey. The Indominus' ear-splitting roars fill the air as Abby runs for the exit, Marcus behind her (barely avoiding a close call with the Jeep, which the Indominus pitches forward like a toy car into a brick wall). Abby sprints over split branches, vines, and the remains of John Hammond’s Tyrannosaurus Rex display with Marcus vaulting its ribcage next to her. He gets out the door before her and reaches a hand to help her down the steps, but she’s steady and quick on her feet, even in her heels—she grabs his arm, instead, and pulls him after her.

They run full-tilt through the jungle. Abby pulls out her phone and dials Octavia immediately as the ground trembles beneath their feet.

“Octavia! We found her, south of the Valley, between the old park and the Aviary.”

“Wait, are you following the dinosaur?!” Monty’s incredulous voice breaks through.

“Yes!” Abby pants. She uses a sturdy log to launch herself over a puddle, catches Marcus’ arm on her landing. “Get ACU out here. Real guns this time. And for god’s sake, someone find me a pair of boots.”

“ACU is airborn, they took the helicopter!” Octavia says.

“Who’s flying it?” Abby actually stops for a moment. Marcus halts with her, trying to figure out what’s happening from only her side of the conversation. Realization dawns on them both at the same time. 

“Thelonius.”

They start running again. The ten minutes that they run, feet crashing through the underbrush of the jungle, feel like the longest of her life (and considering she’d spent no less than 13 hours in labour with Clarke, that is saying something). Abby finally slows as they reach the break in the tree line overlooking the Aviary—they actually hadn’t been far from it at all, but in the time it’s taken them to get there, chaos in the form of a blood-thirsty carnivore has apparently redirected from its pursuit of them to rip its way inside the glass dome. 

“There’s the chopper,” Marcus says, pointing in the sky to the Jaha branded helicopter spinning completely out of control over the arching glass roof of the Aviary. 

“Oh god,” Abby gasps. “They're going to crash.”

They do. Abby and Marcus watch as a Pteranodon rips through the front of the helicopter and lodges itself in the glass, presumably ending the last chance Jaha has to pull the chopper from its downwards spiral. The entire thing falls like a dead weight into the glass of the Aviary. There’s a second of silence, and then nothing but fire and smoke billow out in plumes from the massive smashed hole in the roof.

Abby grabs for Marcus’ hand as they watch their friend die attempting to save them all. They don’t really have time to mourn—with two exits now conveniently cut into their habitat, the Pteranodons and Dimorphodons begin fly out of the Aviary in droves. And head right for them.

Marcus tugs Abby’s hand and pulls her from the ridge immediately.

“Trees! Go, go!” He yells, but it’s really not necessary at this point—Abby knows the “running from extinct animals who want to kill them” drill, and she makes full use of her newly acquired knowledge to get herself as fast as possible to the safety of the trees ahead of them. She feels Marcus’ arm wrap around her back, and looks behind them to see a Dimorphodon sweep dangerously low, with its T-Rex-like jaws opening wide as it flies straight at them.

They dive. Abby hits the ground with Marcus’ form crashing into her side and scrambling to shield her as the carnivorous pterosaur sweeps over their heads, narrowly missing where they had been running to follow its flock towards the park.

 

* * *

 

The Jeep smashes through the remains of one of the old park gates like they were made of paper. Clarke whips her head back to see nothing but dust in their wake, and can’t help but laugh in sheer relief at what the gate signifies—they’re back in the territory of Jurassic World, now. They’re almost there.

“I think we’re safe,” Clarke grins, looking over at Lexa’s face, which is screwed up in concentration. She’s looking in her rearview mirror, eyes narrowing—

“Clarke…”

Clarke looks back again. The horizon is slowly filling with birds, rushing quickly towards them in a flock like Clarke’s never seen, all unorganized and scattered, like they’re fleeing a predator.

Except they aren’t birds. 

“Go!” Clarke screams, ripping her eyes from the approaching pterosaurs. She can see terrifyingly sharp beaks and pointed teeth from here. “Go, go, go!”

Lexa doesn’t say a word. She throws the car into gear and hits the gas, propelling the old car forward as fast as possible as the entire contents of the Aviary soars overhead.

 

* * *

 

Abby’s phone chimes with Raven’s personal ringtone ("Abby, if my ringtone isn’t custom set to The Who, I am never calling you again.”) as they make it back into the main corral area of Jurassic World.

“Raven!” Abby cries out in relief. She hadn’t heard from her since she’d left the hotel.

“Abby! Are you okay? I’ve been trying to call you for hours!” Raven sounds panicked. “Octavia said the Indominus got out, and you were chasing it like some insane version of Lara Croft!”

“Roughly half of those things are true,” Abby pants, skidding alongside Marcus and feeling his arm halt her before a frantically driven Mercedes clips them both. “Kane and I are looking for Clarke and Lexa, who the Indominus is apparently also looking for.”

“That’s why I’m calling! Octavia found them on surveillance; they’re coming up to the West gate. I’m headed there now.”

Abby reaches out and grabs Marcus’ arm in relief.

“Okay,” she gasps, completely out of breath. “They found them,” she mouths to him. Marcus squeezes her hand for a moment before he disappears from her sight. “Okay, stay right there. I’ll be right there.”

“Hey!” Marcus’ voice calls out as she hangs up with Raven. She looks around and spots him sitting at the wheel of a four-by-four. “Get on!”

Abby doesn’t think twice. She climbs on behind him and wraps her arms securely around his waist, tucking her knees next to his thighs. They drive off immediately with one of his hands resting firmly over hers. 


	5. Fifth Iteration

  
FIFTH ITERATION

“Flaws in the system will now become severe.” –Ian Malcolm, _God Creates Dinosaurs_

 

* * *

 

Clarke has never hugged anyone as tightly as she does Raven when she spots her friend waiting for her at the West gate.

“You’re alive!” Raven exclaims, squeezing Clarke so tight that the bruises from the Gyrosphere’s seatbelt ache like nothing she’s ever felt. “How are you alive?!”

“We—" Lexa’s attempted explanation is cut short when the unmistakable screeches of the Pteranodons reach their ears. All three women look up to see the flock finally arrive over the walled gates of the park.

Raven, Clarke, and Lexa all share a second of wide-eyed panic before Raven is yelling, “RUN!” and yanking them both along with her.

They crash into the Main Street area of the park to the soundtrack of angry chips from the dinosaurs and terrified screaming from the people running desperately from them. At least three bodies already lay twitching on the scorching concrete, while an uncountable amount more dive and fight the Dimorphons’ giant, snapping jaws. A veritable throng of people batters the three women this way and that as they all duck to avoid dive after dive from the agitated winged beasts.

Lexa pulls Clarke down to miss an incoming Pteranodon. They hear Raven give a protesting cry of “HEY!” before the pterosaur they’d been quick enough to duck has Raven by her shoulders and is hauling her up, up into the air, screeching, clearly intent on pulling Raven so far skyward that she’d never survive the fall down—

Clarke barely has time to start a desperate sprint after her before Lexa is in front of her, vaulting herself up into one of the stone platforms normally designated for seating, pulling something shining and glinting from her pocket and throwing what Clarke belatedly recognizes as a knife straight at the pterosaur’s exposed belly. The Pteranodon squawks once, in protest, before releasing its long claws from Raven’s struggling shoulders and dropping her dizzyingly towards the ground.

“RAVEN!” Clarke screams, running for her falling friend—

It’s not that far a fall, but it’s far enough that Raven would easily break a limb under the force of her body hitting the ground. Clarke runs full tilt for where Raven is rapidly approaching the ground and skids to a stop underneath her, risks a quick glance up before Lexa is in front of her, too, grabbing her arms and forming a square net with their locked arms roughly 3 seconds before Raven hits their braced limbs and buckles their knees with the force of her impact.

All three women collapse to the ground. Clarke pulls her arm from underneath Raven and hovers her hands over her shoulders, checking her them Gfor punctures from the claws, looking for a drop of blood or a gash—

“Why the hell did you have a knife?” Raven groans, whole blessedly uninjured body lying prone on the concrete. “And thank you, also."

“Always pays to be doubly armed, and you’re welcome.”

Raven rolls her head to look at Clarke, who feels waves of relief roll through her trembling body.

“I like your girlfriend, Clarke.”

Clarke laughs. “Me, too."

 

* * *

 

Marcus’ feet hit the pavement hard and fast amongst the crashing and panicked bodies that sprint in front and behind him from all directions. Abby keeps a steady pace beside him in her heels (which he now has endless respect for, and makes a note to tell her so when they aren’t on the brink of dying). He holds his gun sure in front of him while he and a dozen of the park’s guards emerge onto the chaotic Main Street of Jurassic World. 

It’s anarchy. Windows smash under the weight of both human and pterosaur bodies crashing into them; debris flies everywhere, every piece of branded merchandise scattered and ripped across the pavement; blood splatters as person after person is clipped by sharp claws and even sharper beaks.

Marcus takes point with his men as Abby leaps onto a concrete planter to search the crowd for Clarke. He takes point at her side, picking off whatever Pteranodons or Dimorphodons that decide to try and dive-bomb her.

“Clarke!” She yells. “Lexa!”

There. Abby doesn’t see them, but Marcus does: in the distance, huddled around the clearly collapsed form of Raven Reyes, is the flash of blonde and brown curled hair that belong to Clarke and Lexa. And there, too, is a massive Pteranodon, sweeping low, heading straight for them—

“WATCH IT!” Marcus yells.

And then he’s on the ground. His whole body hits the hot concrete in brutal abruptness, forcing the air right out of his lungs. He feels sharp claws on his back and flips over to face whatever it is that took him out; a Dimorphodon flaps right over his chest, sinking its claws into his shirt and snapping its comically oversized but very dangerous jaws at his face. Marcus grabs at the animal’s wings in an attempt to hold it off, but it’s not only preternaturally strong—it’s winged, and every flap of the appendages gives it leverage over Marcus’ pinned form. 

It snaps its strong teeth at him again and again, gaining traction and closing the space between its mouth and Marcus’ face and neck. He doesn’t have a single thought in his head but _stop it, fight it, do whatever it takes to not die like this_.

The pterosaur lets out a pathetic cry as the butt of a gun comes crashing down on its head. It falls off Marcus immediately, and then impossibly, beautifully, Abby is right there, his gun in her hand as she fires three bullets into the writhing animal.

She lowers the gun with her chest rising and falling rapidly in tune to the deep breaths she takes. Marcus watches as she moves her intense concentration from the now-dead pterosaur to him; she extends her arm and pulls him up, firmly, to his feet.

There’s insane, man-eating, winged dinosaurs (pterosaurs, he knows they’re called, but he doesn’t really care about their exact classification right now) flying around them. A massive, equally man-eating, genetic monstrosity of a dinosaur is on the loose. People are screaming and running for their lives. But Marcus only sees Abby—brave Abby, both a soft heart and a hard exterior, more stubborn than sense at times, with a moral centre that points magnetic north and a disillusioned heart that briefly pulled it off-target. Marcus only sees Abby.

He rides the adrenaline coursing through his body, takes a chance on its potency and his feelings for both the Abby he knew (wife of his best friend, pain in the ass who challenged him) and the Abby he knows (a friend, a maybe failed date, and an affectionate rival who still challenges him). He takes a chance on a rocky history but a solid understanding of exactly who the other is. He takes a chance on the knowledge that they might not make it through the next five minutes. Which is to say—he kisses her.

And she kisses him right back.

It’s hard, and quick, all sure lips and bumping noses. Abby melts a little against him; her hand comes up to grasp at the material of his shirt, fingers clutching at the place right over his heart. She’s still so short, even in heels, but tall enough that Marcus doesn’t strain his neck to meet her as she fits her lips easily against his.

“Mom?!”

Abby breaks away from him at the sound of what Marcus can only assume is Clarke calling for her. They both look up to see Clarke standing, completely dumbfounded at the image of her mother kissing her father’s former best friend in the middle of a prehistoric war zone.

“Clarke!” Abby cries out. She thrusts the gun back into Marcus’ hands and takes off, heels clicking as she runs full speed at Clarke. The two women catch each other up in a desperate hug.

“Oh my god, thank god. Thank god.” Abby pulls back and frames Clarke’s face with her hands, kissing every part of her daughter’s cheeks and forehead that she can reach. “What happened? Are you okay? Where did you go?! Why didn’t you come back?”

“Is that Kane?” Clarke asks, still staring wide-eyed at Marcus behind her. He gives her a small smile, then realizes he must look like a crazy person, having just kissed her mother and now standing here, smiling at her with a gun the size of his upper body in his hand.

“I…yes. We...work together.” Abby trails off, lamely. Marcus smirks. He shoulders his gun and moves past the Griffin women to approach a brave-faced Raven, whose sprawled body doesn’t show a sign of a break—but Raven’s had a bad leg for a few years after an accident at school, and Marcus wants to make sure the girl can move. It’s the least he can do for his occasional cigar-smoking buddy.

“Reyes,” Marcus says, leaning down next to her.

“Kane,” Raven snaps back. “Having fun with my boss?”

“Oh, tons.” Marcus holds his hand out to Raven. “Chasing Clarke, nearly dying a few times, meeting new people. A perfect first date.”

“Second,” Abby automatically corrects. Her face barely needs to grimace to communicate her immediate regret. 

“I heard about that one,” Raven says, letting Marcus haul her to her feet and help steady her (though she’ll never admit she needed the help in the first place.) “Board shorts, Kane? Really?”

“We need to go.” Marcus levels a glare at her. “Can you walk?”

“Yeah.” Raven tests out the weight on her leg, bounces a little on her toes. “Good to go.”

“Yeah, then let’s…go…” Lexa says, words trailing off as she watches the still swarming pterosaurs overhead. 

Marcus leads them back into the relative safety of the park’s behind the scenes area. Abby’s phone rings as they approach a slightly calmer throng of people that have congregated there; she picks it up and has to plug one ear to hear.

“Octavia, I’m on my way back to you.”

Abby waits for Octavia’s reply while keeping pace with Marcus’ quick tread. Clarke, Lexa, and Raven bring up the rear, all three women on high alert. He can’t hear Octavia’s side of the conversation, but Abby’s face looks dumbfounded.

She stops.

“What do you mean, use the raptors?”

 _Cage_. Marcus grits his teeth. Of course that slimy cretin had figured out a way to not only take control of the park, but to use his goddamn raptors to do it.

“Son of a bitch.” Marcus is drowned out by the incredibly loud clip of a helicopter racing overhead. He can just make out the InGen logo emblazoned on the side.

A clanging starts behind them.

Way too much is happening, way too fast.

“Take the girls.” Marcus says to Abby, reaching for her arm and grasping it tight to form a barrier with her and keep the three back. The giant doors at the end of the corridor bounce a little against a pressure against them. “Get someplace safe.”

The door gives a little.

Marcus abandons all hope of getting Abby, Clarke, Lexa, and Raven out before himself and grabs as many bodies as he can, pushing Raven and Lexa ahead of him while Abby grabs Clarke and pulls her around the side of a parked Mercedes. 

The giant doors give in.

A massive rush of people floods through the entrance, pursued ruthlessly by a Pteranodon that Marcus knows is responsible for the damage to the door. He shoulders his gun and pulls open the driver’s side of the car, makes sure Raven and Lexa have scrambled inside the back seat, and climbs into the relative safety of the vehicle. Abby and Clarke’s doors both slam a moment later.

Marcus throws the car into reverse against the sea of people coming at them like rushing water. He drives the SUV almost blindly backwards, concentrating over the shouts of the three women in the backseat (or, perhaps, in spite of them) to push the car back, back, and into an alcove. Abby collapses against the seat in relief, one hand grasping his arm tightly.

“This does not feel safe,” Clarke says from behind him. Marcus can’t take his eyes off of the sheer amount of people running in front of the car.

“Can we maybe stay with you? Strength in numbers, and all that?” Raven asks, in a voice that indicates she’s not really so much asking as communicating her plans for the rest of this nightmare.

“I am never leaving you as long as you live.” Abby looks back at all three girls.

“That sounds good.” Raven nods.

“Works for me.” Lexa agrees.

“You’re stuck with me, anyway, so I’m fine with that.” It’s most surprising coming from Clarke, especially after what Abby had told him about their rocky relationship after Jake’s death. He sees Abby give Clarke a brilliant smile.

“Now what?” Lexa asks, leaning forward to address Marcus.

“Now,” Marcus says, putting the car in drive and inching past the crowd, “we go get my raptors."

 

* * *

 

Marcus’ raptors have always terrified Abby. She knows it’s not an illogical fear to have—in fact, given that she runs a park full of carnivores, and that the predecessors to his had killed her husband, it may be an entirely healthy one. But given her awareness of her own fear, Abby had still never been able to bring herself to spend more than 5 minutes down by the raptor paddock, even with the knowledge that Marcus had “tamed” them (“tamed” being a strong word—Abby knew enough about the park’s raptors, as well as the real ones that only existed as fossils now, to know that they were about as tame-able as a house cat).

The car skids to a stop outside the entrance to the paddock, where Abby can see Lincoln and Cage arguing next to the caged-in form of Delta. Marcus doesn’t even bother closing the car door as he jumps out of it and strides up to the approaching Cage with fury in his eyes.

“The mother hen has finally arrived—“ Marcus’ fist against Cage’s jaw halts the rest of that sentence inside Cage’s now bleeding mouth. 

“Get the hell out of here.” Marcus steps into Cage’s personal space. “And stay the hell away from my animals.”

“Cage, you wanted this to happen, you son of a bitch.” Abby snaps, arms folded over her still-tied blouse. 

“Jesus!” Cage exclaims, rubbing his chin. “How many more people have to die before this mission starts to make sense to you?”

“It’s not a mission. It’s a field test.” Lincoln cuts in as he comes to stand beside Marcus in solidarity. He makes an impressive sight, all tan skin and strongly muscled arms. Cage doesn’t look fazed by their display at all.

“This is an InGen situation now,” he says to Abby, before turning back to address not only Marcus and Lincoln, but the rest of the crew within earshot. Marcus steps closer to her as Cage starts going off. “Okay, there are gonna be cruise ships that show up here at first light. Everybody is gonna get off this island. You’re gonna watch a new story tomorrow about how you all saved lives. No, better yet, how your animals saved lives.”

Marcus glances over at both she and Lincoln.

“They’ve never been out of containment. It’s crazy.” Lincoln indicates where the raptors have been loaded into their metal harnesses.

“Let’s move it out!” Cage shouts. Activity restarts behind him, park works going back to preparing the raptors for transport. He turns back and heads right up to Marcus. “This is happening. With or without you.”

 

* * *

 

Clarke leans against the rungs of the raptor containment area with Raven and Lexa on either side of her. All three watch Kane (dammit, her mom kissed the man after shooting a dinosaur for him, she should probably start thinking of him as Marcus)  approach one of the thrashing dinosaurs and lay his hands on either side of her muzzled head.

“Easy, Blue.” The raptor begins to calm at the sound of his voice. “Easy. Atta girl. You don’t scare me.”

“Hey, Kane!” Raven calls from beside Clarke.

Kane—Marcus!—carefully gives the raptor a final stroke and turns to approach all three of them.

“Are they safe?” Raven asks. Clarke already knows the answer—she’s personally terrified of the things that killed her father—but she’s curious to see how Marcus will respond.

“No. They’re not.” He says, resolutely. Clarke respects his honesty, and she knows that from the tiny nod Lexa gives that she does, too. She’s a little less irritated at her mom for deciding to hook up with the guy training the loathsome carnivores.

“What are their names?” She asks, nodding her head at the one closest to her.

“Well,” Kane points to the raptor farthest from them and names them in order of their proximity. “You’ve got Charlie, that’s Echo, here is Delta, and this one’s called Blue. She’s the beta.”

“Who’s the alpha?” Lexa asks, sounding genuinely curious.

“You’re lookin’ at him.”

Silence meets the heavy statement for a moment before Raven grabs a pebble from the ground and throws it at Kane’s chest.

“That was the worst line!” She laughs. “‘You’re lookin’ at him.’ What, you’re the Raptor Boss? Director Dinosaur?”

“I think that’s my mom,” Clarke points out, completely reasonably.

“That’s right! That is Abby! So if Abby’s your boss, I guess that makes her the park alpha, huh? Do the raptors respect human corporate hierarchy? How do you feel about sharing dinosaur alpha status with Abby? Tell us, raptor Alpha Marcus Kane, the Raptor Whisperer.” Raven’s grin is nothing short of shit-eating as she uses the bars of the cage to swing her body from side to side. 

“I feel great about sharing absolutely everything with Abby.” The power of Kane’s smirk could fuel a small city. Clarke groans audibly at the implication.

“Nooo,” Raven yells, finding yet another pebble to throw at Kane. “No, you don’t get to turn my awesome joke into a gross one!”

“Respect your elders,” Kane warns, and turns back towards the raptors. 

 

* * *

 

Abby’s first, second, and third instinct is and has always been to keep Clarke safe. And that means that, despite the fact that she trusts Marcus to get the job done, she is still going to do whatever it takes to make sure Clarke, Lexa, and Raven have the best shot at surviving.

Right now, the options are limited for that particular game plan. In fact, the best she’s got is an armoured maintenance truck.

“See?” Abby says, throwing the doors wide at the back of the cab. “Totally safe.”

All three girls peer around her at the scattered parts and boxes inside the metal walls.

“Better than being Indominus Rex bait,” Raven says, already climbing inside the truck. Clarke and Lexa follow her up into the high platformed cab and settle themselves on some spare metal boxes.

“If you need me, I’ll be up front. Just open that, window, okay?” Abby watches Raven settle in between Clarke and Lexa and glance up at the sliding divider above her head. “Put your seatbelts on.”

There’s some momentary confusion as all three girls look around for seat belts Abby belatedly realizes aren’t there. She sighs.

“Okay. Just…hold hands.”

She sees Raven hold her hands out expectantly as she closes the doors behind them.

 

* * *

 

The back of the truck is chilly from the cooling off of the day’s humid air. Clarke sits with one hand in Raven’s and the other picking subconsciously at a loose thread on her beyond damaged shorts.

The silence is tense. 

“So, Lexa,” Raven suddenly breaks the quiet of the truck. “How’s your first couples vacation going?”

Clarke can almost feel Lexa’s amusement at her best friend’s train of thought.

“It’s a lot more exciting than I thought it would be,” Lexa says, glancing at Clarke over Raven’s ponytailed head. “I think I almost prefer running for our lives to sitting on a beach.”

“Oh my god, you’re as weird as she is,” Raven sighs. “After years of boring ones, you finally found the girl who brings out your inner adrenaline junkie. I’m kind of impressed, Clarke.”

“Thank you.” Clarke chooses to take Raven’s observations as a compliment. “I think.”

“I like her,” Lexa says. She finally offers out her hand to Raven, too, and the two girls join hands happily.

“See, Clarke? Good things come out of being chased by killer dinosaurs! Lexa and I made a new friend, and your mom is gonna get laid!”

“RAVEN!”


	6. Sixth Iteration

  
SIXTH ITERATION

“System recovery may prove impossible.” –Ian Malcolm, _God Creates Dinosaurs_

 

* * *

 

The chunk of flesh that the Indominus ripped out of her own hide stinks of decomposition as Marcus wafts it towards the small kennels holding the raptors. He clicks the device in his hands at every gate to indicate to the animals that their target has been identified.

Marcus hands off the bits of skin and muscle to Jasper Jordan, the new intern, and heads for where Lincoln waits on the four-by-four in front of an InGen truck full of soldiers. He climbs onto the motorcycle the other man had retrieved for him and shares a nod with the heavily muscled man.

“Ready?” Marcus asks.

“Ready,” Lincoln answers with absolute conviction.

Up top, on the observation platform, Jasper climbs the last step and takes the button that opens the kennels in his hand. Marcus gives him the go-ahead.

Jasper presses the button, and his raptors are free for the first time.

 

* * *

 

Abby holds the tablet Lincoln provided her tightly in her hands as she watches the POV cameras strapped to each Velociraptor’s head glow bright green with movement. The InGen truck’s camera shows her both Marcus and Lincoln riding fast behind the dinosaurs.

The divider slides open. Clarke, Raven, and Lexa’s heads all crowd in next to each other to watch the raptors advance over Abby’s shoulder.

“Dammit,” Raven says, watching the screen as Marcus rides in a pack with the raptors. “He really is the alpha.”

“Your boyfriend is a badass, Dr. Griffin.” Lexa has awe in her voice.

Clarke sighs. Abby smirks.

 

* * *

 

The raptors take no time in adjusting to their new environment. Blue’s pointed body sprints like she’s had the room to do it her whole life; Delta zig-zags and leaps over the trunks of fallen trees, but stays closest to the back to run alongside Charlie. Echo, who has always been the most difficult and thus the most bloodthirsty, gets a snap from Blue when she pulls up too far in front of the beta raptor.

Marcus urges the bike farther and farther forward until he’s in the midst of his raptors, riding with complete determination (and no small amount of exhilaration) alongside their chirping jaws and swinging tails. Their balance is impeccable; where Marcus’ bike crushes through the underbrush, the raptors glide over it like particularly vicious ghosts.

The night air rushes past Marcus’ face as he maneuvers the bike up and over a patch of dead tree branches. Blue vaults through the bushes and over the slippery leaves like they’re nothing; her head doesn’t even jerk when she dodges from side to side, much like a chicken’s. 

Lincoln notices the change in the pace of the raptors at the same time Marcus does.

“They’re slowing down,” he says.

“They’ve got something.” Marcus slows his bike next to Lincoln’s four by four and watches as the raptors make one last crash through the trees to halt in a clearing. 

The InGen truck stops at Marcus’ raised fist. A dozen men immediately flood out of the car and take position on Marcus’ point, following him farther into the clearing with their guns raised as they fan out to find the optimal spots for getting a clear shot of the missing Indominus.

Marcus and Lincoln hold their own weapons aloft behind the fallen trunk of a once massive tree. Up in the clearing, the raptors wait almost anxiously for a sign of their target, bobbing side to side and bumping one another in anticipation. 

Something doesn’t feel right.

The echoing roar of the Indominus precedes the arrival of the great carnivore. She enters the clearing almost quietly, her steps shaking the ground a little, but her stance low and open in a kind of greeting. The raptors wait at her feet for the Indominus to lower her head down to their level, where she growls what Marcus can only guess to be a greeting at them.

Blue calls back.

“Something’s wrong,” Lincoln whispers. “They’re communicating.”

They are. And Marcus feels dread drop into his stomach like a pit, spreading, filling him to the brim, and overflowing.

“I know why they wouldn’t tell us what it’s made of.” Marcus doesn’t take his eyes of off of the Indominus through the sight on his rifle. 

“Why?” Lincoln asks.

“That thing’s part raptor.”

As one, all four of his raptors turn to face him. He knows what this means. He knows they’ve just lost any chance they had of taking the park back. He knows they’re now going to have to fight tooth and nail to get out of there alive, that he’ll have to hurt the creatures he cares about to have any hope in hell of ever seeing Abby again.

“ENGAGE!” One of the InGen soldiers yells.

And then there’s nothing but sound. The soldiers open fire on the Indominus, shot after shot hitting the animal in her hide. She turns and runs as the rocket launcher InGen brought with them fires—the Indominus crashes sideways with the explosion and skids into the ground. Marcus has a heartbeat of hope that maybe, just maybe, they’ve succeeded, but then the Rex-raptor hybrid is up and running away from them. The jungle burns.

Marcus squares up with the others and holds his rifle tight against his shoulder, sweeping his gaze all around the clearing for signs of his—no, they’re not his, anymore, they never really were—raptors.

“Watch your six!” He yells. “The raptors have a new alpha!”

He hears a roar from Charlie, and then a yell from a soldier that is swiftly silenced. Marcus creeps forward slowly, steadily, eyes and ears acutely aware of every snap of a twig, every rustle in the trees. His own breath comes in loud bursts in his chest.

The vicious snarls of the raptors become a kind of sick chorus, the screams of the soldiers a violent crescendo that silences with a sharp crack of bone. Marcus’ heart races in his chest as he takes slow steps through the tall grass.

Charlie’s head bobs up right next to him. She has the body of a dead soldier at her feet and in her teeth. She looks right at Marcus, considering him, meeting his eyes and looking at him with a kind of intrigued recognition that Marcus thought she might have abandoned the minute they switched allegiances. And so Marcus is startled when a missile comes out of no where and Charlie just dies, in front of him, in a rain of fire, and Marcus doesn’t have time to process that at all, because the force of the explosion throws him backwards like a rag doll.

The Indominus’ roars are terrifyingly closer than before. He doesn’t think. He takes one look at where Charlie had been and makes a run for it, head pounding, gun in hand, crashing through the jungle with no thought in his head except that maybe the other raptors will follow Charlie’s train of thought, that he’s safe from them, at least, that if he can get to his bike and get away from the Indominus, he might have a chance to grab Abby and the girls and get them to some form of safety.

He skids straight into his bike and throws one leg over it. His head snaps up when he hears a desperate yell of “BLUE!” from Lincoln, and he looks over to see Blue terrorizing a hollow log that Lincoln is clearly hiding in. 

Marcus revs the bike’s engine. He lets out a sharp whistle. _Follow me_ , he begs. _Come after me_. Octavia will kill him if anything happens to Lincoln.

Blue does. She launches herself off the log and heads straight for Marcus, who swings the bike around and takes off again, her feet carrying her after him in a race that he’s not sure he’s going to win. 

 

* * *

 

“Oh god,” Abby whispers, placing her hand over her mouth as she watches not only the up-close and personal deaths of the soldiers, but the desperate escape of Marcus with Blue hot on his tail.

“Is everyone dead?” Clarke asks.

Abby strongly considers lying. All three girls look scared and like they’re trying very hard not to be, but the mom in Abby knows that while she could lie to alleviate their fear, all three will respect her more if she just tells the truth.

“Not everyone,” she says, watching Marcus’ silhouette speed farther and farther away from Blue’s camera.  _Thank god_.

“I am gonna need an extended stay at Margaritaville after this.” Raven’s voice shakes with false bravado. “Who’s in?”

A bloody hand slams against the window.

All four women scream. An InGen soldier stands outside the car, yelling through the window—

“GET OUT OF HERE! GET OUT OF HERE!”

Abby can’t move fast enough. She cranks the key into the ignition and roars the truck to life.

“Shit!” She hears Raven yell. Abby looks in the rearview mirror to see a fully grown Velociraptor leaping into the cab after the soldier, who had jumped in the back of the open doors. She slams her foot on the gas and lurches the truck forward violently—the man and raptor slide out of the back in a sickening crunch, bouncing a little on the pavement.

“Hold on!” Abby yells through the partition. 

She takes the advice for herself, too, driving with white knuckles curled over the steering wheel. The barely get through ten seconds of their escape when the glass of the window the now-deceased soldier had slammed his hand on shatters into a million pieces all over her, and the wide-open jaws of one of Marcus’ raptors comes straight through the opening and into the front seat. 

Abby screams with her heart in her throat and rips her arms away from the wheel and thus the raptor’s snapping jaws. The stinking smell of carnivore comes in waves off of the creature as Abby pushes herself as far back in her seat as she can, watching the raptor thrash to try and get a better position in the cab—

The jaws of the raptor close for a second, her head exposing the her neck, and Abby takes her chance: she throws her elbow into the raptor’s chin and shoves it straight out the window.

 

* * *

 

Clarke sees the raptor from the front seat hit the ground, hard, scrambling for only a second before it kicks itself back onto its feet and starts chasing after the truck again. The open doors of the cab bang from the bumps and divots in the dirt road.

Raven creeps forward on barely balanced feet. She grabs for a canister secured to the wall of the truck and pulls it free, surfs slightly on the rocking of the truck as she pushes the heavy canister on its side and shoves it out the back of the truck.

The canister bounces directly in the raptor’s path. She dodges it, and disappears near the side of the truck.

 

* * *

 

Abby spots the raptor’s approach in her side mirror. She immediately knows what to do—she turns the wheel as far as she can and forces the raptor off the pavement and crashes it into a tree along the side of the road. 

One down.

 

* * *

 

“Jesus, your mom is a badass, too,” Lexa gasps, holding on tight to the side of the car as the raptor crashes into a tree and stays there.

“That’s where you get it from.” Raven has one hand on Clarke’s arm, the other holding to the grating on the floor. She looks almost offensively impressed.

Clarke doesn’t respond. In front of them, another raptor sprints into view, bringing with it a mixture of fear and sheer exasperation at the lack of breaks they’re catching. 

“How many goddamn raptors are there?!” Raven yells, angry.

Clarke scans the walls. There, against the metal panels of the truck, are two shock sticks with sharp prongs sticking out the top. She lets go of Raven to make her way over on unsteady feet; Lexa catches on and helps her as she unhooks it from the wall and slams it on the ground, holding her waist so she doesn’t slide as she inches forward along the shaking floor towards the doors. 

The raptor leaps. It hits the back of the cab and tries to claw its way inside, jaw snapping viciously at them. Clarke scrambles for any kind of switch, a button, anything to turn the damn taser on.

“Here!” Raven yells. She crashes in beside Clarke, anchors herself by looping her leg through Lexa’s, and hits the switch Clarke hadn’t even seen. Together, all three thrust the electrified prongs at the thrashing raptor and hit it straight in the belly.

It screams as it is forced back and out of the car.

“Maybe you’re your own brand of badass,” Raven pants, collapsing down onto the floor. 

“Are you girls okay?!” Abby’s frantic voice comes from the front seat.

“We’re okay!” Clarke cries. Her chest heaves as she turns back to look at Raven and Lexa. “We just electrocuted a dinosaur. Lincoln and Octavia will be so proud.”

“Do you think Lincoln’s okay?” Lexa asks, pulling Clarke up with her near the partition and putting a protective hand on her arm as the truck races onward. Lexa and Lincoln had been friends since they were kids—it was Lincoln and Octavia meeting that actually led to Clarke and Lexa’s own introduction.

“We saw Kane save him. He’ll be fine. He is the toughest guy I’ve ever met.” Clarke reaches forward and grabs for Raven’s wrist, hauls her bodily up with she and Lexa until all three are bunched together and holding tight to whatever they can find.

“Okay, do you think Kane’s okay? Because that raptor was really fast.” Raven wiggles a little until she can press her back against the wall. “Not that I worry about him. He's my cigar supply.”

“Of course Kane’s okay, he’s most stubborn person I’ve ever met, and I’ve met Ian Malcolm. He’s gonna stay alive just to spite my mom.”

“Or make out with her,” Raven immediately chimes in.

Clarke elbows her in the stomach.

 

* * *

 

Abby hears the familiar sound of Marcus’ bike before she sees him.

“Kane!” Raven yells from the back of the cab. Abby checks her blessedly still intact side mirror and yes, there he is, coming up alongside the car like some stupidly handsome, modern-day Indiana Jones.

“We gotta get indoors!” Marcus yells through the broken window. “Follow me!”

He pushes the bike ahead of the truck. Abby pulls her phone out with a smile on her face and dials the number for the control room.

“Octavia! Call in a chopper!”


	7. Seventh Iteration

 

  
SEVENTH ITERATION

“Increasingly, the mathematics will demand the courage to face its implications.”—Ian Malcolm, _God Creates Dinosaurs_

 

* * *

 

The concourse of Main Street is completely deserted when both vehicles pull up to the Innovation Centre. Marcus disembarks first and heads for the truck, grabbing Abby’s door as it swings open. He catches her as she slides off the seat and straight into his arms.

“Thank god.” He whispers into her neck. Abby clutches tightly at his shoulders and heaves a sigh against his chest for a moment before pulling away and kissing her own relief to his lips. She pulls away, smiles just a little, and grabs his hand to jog around the back of the truck to where Clarke, Lexa, and Raven are climbing out of the battered cab.

“Good?” Abby asks them, surveying all three for any new cuts or bruises.

“Good.” Clarke nods. 

“Let’s go.” Abby takes off for the front the tree-top like Innovation Centre.

The inside is completely devoid of people, too. All five run across the carpeted foyer silently, their heads whipping around to take in the complete lack of life inside. They barrel down the steps (past the statue of Hammond, which Raven smacks as she goes) and take off into the halls of the lab.

It’s empty, too.

“They evacuated the labs,” Abby says, slowly, staring around at the abandoned workstations and hastily knocked over samples. All of the eggs and amber are gone, too, with only the plastic display ones they’d kept out for the tourists lining the shelves.

The deeper they wander into the real labs (and not the showy ones they used to wow park goers—John Hammond had gotten one thing right, and it was allowing the public to see just enough of their process to think everything they did was transparent), the more the feeling of uneasiness increases in Abby. Nothing looks right. Nothing feels right. She, Marcus, Clarke, Lexa, and Raven all stop in front of the tanks holding various animals—a cuttlefish, a snake, a chameleon, and an iguana—and Abby has to take a deep breath to steady herself. Marcus’ hand floats silently to the small of her back and anchors her as they push forward.

A hiss snaps every one of them around. Two workers in the next lab are lowering what Abby assumes is the last of the dinosaur DNA into cold storage trunks.

“What are you doing?” She asks. How dare they clear out like this, with no proper procedures in place. This was theft—not from her, but from Jaha, and his company, and Wells, who would now inherit everything his father left behind.

“I’m afraid that’s above your pay grade, honey.” Cage Wallace’s condescending tone floats across the lab. Abby ignores the jab.

“Where are Henry and Lorelai?”

“Doctors Wu and Tsing work for us.” He doesn’t elaborate on the ‘us’, but Abby knows it means InGen. They’d always worked for InGen, apparently even after Jaha had hired them to develop the new park. Gave Henry, at least, a chance to do differently what Hammond had failed at with the first park.

Clarke stands a little away, staring at the computer image of the Indominus that sits on a spare terminal. 

“Why?” She asks Wallace, who smiles. “Why make her at all? Why militarize the raptors?”

“Somebody has to make sure this company has a future. I’ve fought too hard to let all of this fall apart now. My father believed Jaha when he said he’d allow us free access to the animals, but what did he do? Cut him out. Completely. We had no choice but to recruit in new talent. Wu was easy. So was Tsing. People who could be brought in to create what we needed and keep their heads down. I thought you might be one of those people, Kane,” Cage nods to Marcus. “After we disposed of Griffin, but despite you being a pain in the ass, you turned out to actually be able control the raptors, and, well, we had to choice but to keep you around.”

Abby’s heart jumps into her throat.

“You did what?” Her voice shakes. Clarke stands still as a statue at the computer, staring straight at Cage as though she doesn’t see him.

“Griffin wouldn’t play ball, so had to go. You told he and Jaha about our plans for the Indominus, and the stupid man wanted to run to the media and blow the whistle. So, we had him taken care of. Sorry about that.” He doesn’t sound sorry at all. “But we had to get it done. Imagine that one, a fraction of the size. Deadly, intelligent, able to hide from the most advanced military technology. A living weapon, unlike anything we’ve ever seen. See, millions of years of evolution, what did we learn? Nature is the gift—“

A fist connects with Cage’s jaw for the second time that day. Clarke stumbles back, fists clenched, breathing heavily. Abby feels the knot of dread that had grown in her stomach as Cage talked loosen as she pulls her daughter back against her, running her thumb over Clarke’s damaged knuckles.

“You took a father away from his daughter in some insane quest to weaponize living animals,” Abby says, looking up at Cage’s pathetic form hunched over on the table with his jaw in his hand. She finally understands what Marcus has been telling her all along. “How stupid can you be?”

“I am the only one _doing_ anything—“

A snarl interrupts his frankly self-indulgent justifications. One of the raptors that had been chasing the truck jumps through the door with her sharp eyes trained on Cage. Marcus throws his arms out to push Abby, Clarke, Lexa, and Raven behind him; Abby pulls the back of his shirt to bring him with them as they back as far away from the advancing dinosaur as they can. She grabs Clarke’s hand and moves her behind her, as well, shielding the three alongside Marcus.

“Easy. Easy, boy. Easy.” Cage’s voice trembles as he tries to hold off the raptor. 

_It’s a she, you idiot_ , Abby thinks. She wisely keeps her mouth shut. 

“Hey,” Cage pleads. “We’re on the same side, right? Easy.” 

He holds his hand out like Abby had once seen Marcus do on one of her rare trips to the Velociraptor paddock. Abby reaches up and holds tight to Marcus’ bicep until her nails dig into the skin; the raptor is moving closer and closer to Cage, growling low under her breath. If they make one sound, she’ll know they’re there and it’ll all be over.

“I’m on your side,” Cage says, and his hand comes up to the raptor’s eye level.

She pounces. Cage screams as his hand is chomped in the raptor’s sharp teeth. All Abby sees is his body buckle to the floor before she’s grabbing for Clarke and running out of the room after Marcus, Raven, and Lexa. Cage’s screams and the raptor’s delighted squeals echo in their wake.

They skid into the hall in one big clump, bodies crashing into each other in their haste to put as much space between they and the Velociraptor as possible. 

“This way!” Abby yells, intending to head to the back of the building for the control room. They’re immediately halted by the raptor crashing through the glass—clearly she’s finished her snack, and ready for them as the main course.

All five turn tail and run back out the way they came. They sprint as quickly as possible across the lobby of the Innovation Centre, Raven ducking to her side to smack one of the glowing computer terminals as she goes. A hologram of a spitting Dilophosaurus appears in the middle of the room and brings the raptor up short, giving them just enough time to make it out of the Centre and back out onto the front steps.

And then Blue is there. Abby can’t tell the other 3 apart, but she knows Blue, because she had been Marcus’ favourite, with her trademark blue stripes and quick mind as the pack beta.

And then the one inside the Visitor’s Centre crashes through the doors.

And another creeps up on Abby’s left.

They’re surrounded. Abby pulls Clarke, Lexa, and Raven as close behind her as she can while keeping herself as big a target possible.

“That’s how it is, huh?” Marcus addresses Blue with his gun by his side. All three Velociraptors begin to close in on their little group, herding them closer and closer together. _Pack hunters_.

Marcus holds his hand in front of him while using the other to lower his gun—and their last line of defense—to the ground. Cage had failed at this, but Abby trusts Marcus, trusts that he knows what he’s doing, that the one thing he’d always gotten right (when it hadn’t come to her, though she supposes they have it figured out now—bonds forged through fire, and all that) had been his job.

“Easy,” he whispers, reaching his hand forward for Blue’s head. He repeats the word over and over as his hand comes closer and closer to the dinosaur’s scaly head, and the strap there that still holds the camera Abby had watched her chase Marcus mercilessly on. Marcus deftly unsnaps the buckle and lets it slide off her head to the ground.

“That’s it,” Marcus says, voice quiet and trustworthy. Blue cocks her head, considers him.

And then Abby hears it: the roar of the Indominus, far too close for comfort. All three raptors whip their heads around to watch their alpha move her massive body down Main Street and approach the front of the Innovation Centre on heavy feet.

She roars at them, again, and Blue barks back. She turns back to face Marcus, head tilting, chirping slightly at him, looking for something…

Blue makes her choice. She faces the Indominus and roars at it, standing squarely in front of Marcus in a protective stance, and Abby thinks that a miracle has occurred, that maybe this isn’t where they die.

The Indominus tosses Blue into the side of the building like she’s a particularly annoying fly.

Marcus starts to back up, bringing his arms up to keep Abby, Clarke, Lexa, and Raven behind him. On either side, the two raptors caw lightly at Marcus, as though asking for permission—

Except, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Marcus whistles, and the two take off like rockets. The five of them seize the opportunity for distraction and run down the stairs underneath the swinging tail of the Indominus. Clarke, Raven, and Lexa run ahead of Abby and all vault themselves over the low partition of a kiosk to dive behind and inside the store. Abby follows them over and crouches at the front, watching Marcus fire round after round into whatever part of the Indominus he can hit.

“We need more,” Lexa says, firmly. Abby glances back at the girl currently shielding her daughter as best she can.

“What?”

“Teeth.” Lexa looks Abby directly in the eye. “We need more teeth.”

Abby’s eyes widen as Lexa’s meaning dawns on her. She turns her head to glance up, and yes—there, the emergency box she’d had installed in every single shop is intact. Abby throws it open and pulls both a flare and a walkie-talkie from it, then turns to the three girls.

“Okay. Stay here.” She ducks down and plants a kiss on Clarke’s forehead. “I love you. Stay here.”

“Abby—“

“Mom!”

But Abby’s already made up her mind. She pulls herself back over the partition and makes a run for it. She skirts past the Indominus’ tail, around one of the raptors, and takes off down the side street as Marcus starts firing immediately to give her cover.

 

* * *

 

Marcus shoots at the Indominus long enough to distract it while Abby sprints off with what he thinks is a walkie-talkie in her hand. He trusts her to know what she’s doing, but he can’t help but be terrified as she runs through the park without his protection from the raptors. He fires until he’s out of bullets, until he has to duck to avoid the Indominus’ foot as it smashes down next to his head. She sweeps an arm out at Delta, and the last Marcus sees of the raptor is a burst of flames as the Indominus throws her into an industrial stovetop.

The Indominus’ clawed hand comes for Marcus next. She smashes the amber pedestal he had been using for cover, but before she can pursue him, Echo darts out from behind her and launches herself at the Indominus’ neck. She manages to sweep up Echo in her teeth with a sickening crunch, and then Echo is gone, too.

Marcus seizes the moment and makes for the kiosk where Abby stashed the three girls. He jumps over the partition and lands directly in front of them. He stays low, finger to his lips to indicate the three women in front of him not speak, and turns his head as the low, menacing growl of the Indominus purrs right outside their hiding place.

Her jaw comes into view, showing off her rows of teeth as she lets out an ear-splitting roar. She rips away the front of the shop; Marcus grabs for the screaming Clarke, Lexa, and Raven and dives with them to the side, where the Indominus’ claws follow, reaching for them with long, pointed claws.

 

* * *

 

Abby runs.

Her heels hit the pavement at a steady clip, the walkie-talkie gripped firmly in her hand as she darts and weaves through alleyways. She briefly remembers her obviously failed request for a pair of boots and presses on, anyway, the boots now a forever unfulfilled wish.

“Octavia,” Abby says into the radio. “Are you still there?” _Please, god, please let her still be there, please let her have stayed…_

“Abby!” Octavia cries. “Where are you? I found Lincoln, he’s okay, I didn’t want to leave without he or you—“

“I need you to open paddock nine!” 

“Paddock nine?” She can hear the confusion in Octavia’s voice. “Are you kidding?!”

Abby finally sees it. She runs the last few feet to the thirty-foot high gate that she needs Octavia to open, panting and completely out of breath and so full of adrenaline that she feels like she may vibrate out of her body.

“Octavia, this is the only way we’re getting out of this alive. Open the door!”

“Be careful Abby,” Octavia says, and that’s the last Abby hears from her as she drops the walkie-talkie to the ground and watches with bated breath and the paddock door slowly, smoothly slides upwards.

Abby can feel her heartbeat in every limb of her body. Her chest and throat are tight with anxiety, choking her a little, threatening to overwhelm her.

She doesn’t have a choice. She lights the flare. And she waits.

The steady, almost lazy thump, thump of heavy feet hitting the ground meets her ears first. Then the rhythmic puff of a giant animal’s breath, the low growl of a predator approaching prey it knows it can catch. And then, lit by the reddy-pink of the flare, the impressive, menacing face of the Tyrannosaurus Rex comes out of the shadows.

Abby runs.

 

* * *

 

The Indominus’ claws scrape ever closer. It catches the sleeve of Lexa’s plaid over shirt and pulls; Clarke cries out in distress as Lexa is slowly pulled away from her, scrambling, until Lexa wiggles out of the outer layer and collapses back against Clarke. 

Clarke feels tears slip down her face as Kane throws his arms across their stomachs, digging his heels into the ground to push them all further into the wall. They’re going to die.

 

* * *

 

Abby runs.

She runs like she’s never run in her life. Not from the Indominus, not from the raptors, not from anything she’s ever been scared of. She runs, because the alternative is that every single person on this island may die if she doesn’t. Raven, Lexa, Marcus, and Clarke will die.

So she runs.

And the Tyrannosaurus Rex that had once ruled the original Jurassic Park all those years ago runs after her.

Abby makes it past the statue of the bones of a Spinosaurus before the T-Rex does; she arcs her arm wide and throws the flare, prays that the Indominus doesn’t see her before the flare hits its body and indicates just where the T-Rex needs to be hunting. The Indominus roars as the flare hits it…

The T-Rex breaks through the statue and lets out an almighty, belly-deep, bone-shaking roar that strikes fear straight into Abby’s heart, even as the force of the destruction sends her skidding into the pavement. The Indominus’ answering roar sounds almost pathetic in comparison.

Abby stares up from where the T-Rex has stepped over her and into the face of a battle she really doesn’t want to be in the middle of. She meets Marcus’ wide eyes from where he crouches behind the destroyed kiosk with her own, and prays that the fear all over his face is not the last thing she makes him feel before she dies.

 

* * *

 

Marcus spots Abby sprawled on the ground as he looks out to see the source of the second terrifying roar. He meets her eyes for a moment and vows to himself that he will get to her, he will rescue her (as much as she allows him to, because she is Abby Griffin, and she is nothing if not stubborn), he will get she and her daughter and her friends off of this goddamn island in one piece. He holds the three women behind him back with his arms as the T-Rex roars and charges the Indominus.

The two collide in a force so powerful it shakes the ground. The T-Rex immediately goes for the Indominus’ throat. Their jaws withdraw and then crash together again, teeth knocking against teeth, tails whipping about and smashing the lights clean off of their posts. The T-Rex gets the Indominus pinned for a moment, sharp teeth sunk securely into it neck, but the Indominus has something nature never gave the T-Rex, but science gifted it—arm strength. It beats and claws at the T-Rex’s face until her jaws release, and then they’re back at each other, biting and ripping at every part of the other they can get to.

The T-Rex goes down with a bellow. Both of their feet bounce just over Abby’s head. She hauls herself up behind a rock garden formation, and then Marcus can’t see her anymore, because the Indominus has shoved the T-Rex into their hiding place and they’re running, falling to get out of the way of the T-Rex’s snapping jaw; all four look back to see Abby, shaking, watching them with naked fear on her face.

“RUN!” She screams.

Marcus looks up. The roof begins to cave and he takes off after the already running Clarke, Lexa, and Raven.

“Go!” He yells, looking back as the Indominus gets the T-Rex on her side again, shoving her into the concrete with her feet. The three girls barely skid into uncontrolled slides as they come around the rock formation and crash in next to Abby, who immediately wraps Clarke up in a fierce hug, her free hand clutching and grasping and both Raven and Lexa’s hands. Abby releases Clarke a little as he ducks in next to them and grabs the front of his shirt, eyes wide, and Marcus kisses the side of her head in relief that she hadn’t died doing the single bravest and stupidest thing he’s ever seen.

The smell of blood is everywhere. The sharp tang of hit Marcus’ nostrils, coats his mouth in its taste. He looks up from Abby to see the Indominus advancing on the pinned T-Rex, jaws open wide, one foot holding their last chance at surviving down while it ducks its head to snap the T-Rex’s neck—

Blue roars.

All five humans and one dinosaur whip their heads up to see Blue, recovered from her brush with the wall, sprinting lithely down main street with her body pointed forward like an arrow. She opens her mouth to reveal her rows of teeth and leaps upward, landing on the Indominus she no longer calls alpha and ripping away at her hide.

The Indominus gets Blue in her teeth and throws her. She shakes her monstrous head as though to clear it of the annoyance Blue presented, clearly intending to get back to her T-Rex feast.

The T-Rex goes for her throat. She gets her jaws around the thinner neck of the Indominus and forces her backwards, smashing the building behind them to rubble as they careen off of the structure and out onto the street. The T-Rex tightens her hold and starts to throw the Indominus’ weight this way and that.

Marcus grabs Abby’s hand, and they daisy chain along until Lexa has Raven’s hand tight in her own. They run, hard, ducking under the thrashing tails and stomping feet, stopping and starting as the bodies of the massive dinosaurs whip across the shops. Blue has kicked herself back up at some point, and she races past Marcus to leap back into the fray as they break their chain and trip out past the shattered glass of a sunglasses shop.

The T-Rex shoves the Indominus against the restaurant front (“Guess I’m not going to Margaritaville anytime soon,” Raven gasps, and Marcus makes a note to tell her that was the exact right thing to say at the exact wrong time to say it), using her heavier weight to push and bully the Indominus to the ground. She grabs the hybrid’s neck in her teeth and yanks her whole body forward. The Indominus rallies one more time, hitting the T-Rex with everything she has, but the T-Rex takes her neck again and throws her up against the metal fence of the Mosasaurus lagoon. The Indominus stands on unsteady legs, shaking her head, opening her mouth to let out a roar—

The quiet Mosasaurus launches herself out of the water in a final Hail Mary. Her huge, long jaws easily snap the Indominus’ neck within them, and she drags the pitifully squealing and kicking monster over the side of the paddock, hauling them both underwater with one last choked-off roar from the Indominus Rex.

Marcus can’t believe his eyes. He stands with Abby, Clarke, Lexa and Raven, all huddled together with one of Abby’s arms clutching Clarke and Lexa while the other holds tight to Marcus’ side, and stares out as his last raptor, his Blue, approaches the T-Rex.

The two seem to have a conversation, though Marcus can’t quite figure out what the gestures of the two’s heads could possibly mean. He does know that the T-Rex not immediately killing Blue is a good sign she’s accepted Blue as, perhaps not pack, but something she does not need to harm. She growls a quiet rumble at Blue, then turns her mottled-brown body and heads back out of Main Street. 

Blue turns to look back at him. Marcus lets go of both Abby and Raven--whose nails were digging into his arm hard enough to draw blood—and steps forward as Blue chirps a little at him in question.

Marcus almost laughs, but he needs to show Blue that he means what he’s about to do: he shakes his head, firmly, in a no—she does not need to fight the T-Rex. Her work is done. 

She’s free.

Blue cocks her head to the side, squawks low in acceptance, and turns away to run silently, alone, out into the jungle.

Marcus watches her go with Abby’s hand in his own.


	8. Epilogue

The morning dawns anew.

Abby lays on her side along one of the crowded benches in a warehouse by the docks, half-asleep with one hand buried in the golden hair that is splayed out against her legs where Clarke sleeps, propped up against the bench with Raven asleep on her shoulder and Lexa’s head in her lap. Marcus had kept a look out for most of (well, what was left of) the night before disappearing before dawn with a kiss to Abby’s head and a whisper that he was going to track down Lincoln.

Abby rouses at the dim shouts of she and Clarke’s names through the buzzing crowd.

“Abby!” Octavia Blake yells, running down the warehouse floor towards them. “Clarke! Oh, thank god.”

Octavia drops to the ground and envelops the newly awoken Clarke in a hug, which her daughter returns with a smile on her face. She releases Clarke to hug Raven and Lexa, too, and then Abby, who sits up (Marcus’ jacket sliding down her shoulders—she doesn’t remember him draping her in it, but she’s endlessly thankful for it) to receive the girl’s relieved embrace.

“Thank you for staying,” Abby says, squeezing Octavia a bit in thanks. “We wouldn’t have made it if you hadn’t gone down with the ship.”

“That was the single most insane plan I have ever heard, Abby, and if you do anything like it again, I will kill you if a dinosaur doesn't.”

Abby laughs, but deep down, she knows Octavia is just a little bit serious.

“Octavia!” Lincoln comes running down the warehouse with Marcus in tow. He catches Octavia as she launches herself at his much bigger body, and then lets her down to pull Clarke, Lexa, and Raven up into it, too. 

Abby smiles tiredly at the group. She stands as Lincoln releases the other three to kiss Octavia properly and steps forward to brush her hand over Clarke’s mussed hair.

“I’m sorry for all this,” she says, directing her apology to Raven and Lexa, too.

“It’s not your fault, mom. Well…not all of it. Just the…creating a terrifying dinosaur bit. And that wasn’t really you at all, either. So, no. Not your fault. I’m scarred for life and will probably require counseling at some point, but also…not really your fault.”

Abby sweeps Clarke up in her arms, holding her tight.

“I really am sorry,” she whispers, tears in her eyes. “For everything.”

For Jake, for the strain on their relationship, for bringing her daughter into a war zone she accidentally helped create. For all of it.

“I know,” Clarke chokes out. Abby pulls back and strokes the tear that has escaped Clarke’s eye from her cheek. “I know, mom. You did the best you could. You always do.”

Abby nods and releases Clarke to quickly wipe her own tears from her face. Lexa clears her throat.

“Well, it wasn’t the quietest vacation I’ve ever had.” Lexa smiles at Clarke as she takes her hand. “But it was definitely the most adventurous.” 

“You almost died, Lexa,” Raven says, exasperatedly. 

“Mmhmm. That was the fun part,” Clarke laughs, the sound a little watery, but genuine. “But definitely never again. Right? No more dinosaur theme parks. No more deadly vacations.”

“Right,” Lexa says. “Well…maybe some deadly vacations.”

She leans down and kisses Clarke’s conspiratorial grin.

“You two are so weird.” Raven throws up her hands and starts to walk away. “Let’s get outta here, the mainland has alcohol, and I need me some alcohol.”

The group slowly trickles out to head for the ferries. All of them pass Marcus as he waits for Abby, and all of them nod, say hello, or, in Lincoln’s case, hug him tightly, as they go.

Abby walks up to him last, clutching his jacket around her shoulders. He looks down at her with a small smile on his face and reaches out to secure the jacket tighter around her.

“So,” Abby says, looking up at him. “What do we do now?”

“Probably stick together. For survival.” Marcus smirks a little and reaches out to take her hand, and suddenly Abby sees a whole future in front of them that isn’t filled with running for their lives, or fighting, or dinosaurs that haven’t been dead for at least a minimum of 65 million years.

Well, maybe some fighting. For variety.

Abby squeezes his hand and leans up to place a soft kiss against his lips. He cups her face with his free hand, strokes the skin of her jaw as he kisses her back with infinite care.

"We're gonna be okay," Abby whispers as they break apart. Marcus smiles the most genuine smile she's ever seen grace his face. He keeps her hand in his and turns with her to follow after their now rather large group of chattering charges.

“Hey,” Raven says, turning around ahead of them with a look on her face that just spells trouble for Abby. “What are we gonna do about the T-Rex?"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THAT'S IT, FOLKS! I hope you enjoyed the ride, because I had an absolute blast writing it. Thank you for reading, commenting, and being generally fabulous. THIS WAS REALLY FUN.
> 
> (Why are there 8 chapters when there were only 7 laid out? Listen, counting is hard.)


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